Phoenix Police Department
Audio By Carbonatix
On the morning of Oct. 2, Phoenix police officers shot and killed Victor Altamirano outside his South Phoenix home. According to a media advisory issued by police that afternoon, officers shot Altamirano after he expressed suicidal thoughts and ran at police with a knife brandished over his head.
While that sequence of events is factual, body-worn camera footage released by the department on Thursday showed that Phoenix police’s initial advisory left out some important details. Chief among them was that Altamirano was not shot as he charged an officer with a knife but was instead fired upon from what appeared to be 40-50 feet away. When an officer fired what apparently were the fatal shots — again, from a significant distance — Altamirano seemed to be limping away from police and posing no immediate threat. Roughly 50 seconds had passed since he charged an officer.
The 58-year-old Altamirano later died at Banner Good Samaritan Hospital. He was the ninth person killed by Phoenix police this year; a tenth was killed on Oct. 11. Last year, Phoenix officers shot and killed 14 people, an increase from 12 in 2023 and 10 in 2022. Phoenix cops have also been involved in several non-fatal shootings this year, including one later on the day they killed Altamirano
Video of the shooting was released Thursday as part of a “critical incident briefing” created by Phoenix police. The department’s briefings are narrated by officers and made public after any police shooting or in-custody death. In addition to body-worn camera footage, the briefings typically include a limited selection of dispatch audio or surveillance footage from nearby businesses. Phoenix New Times also obtained fuller body-cam video from three officers in response to a records request.
Police were responding to a call about a man in a family home threatening to kill himself. The caller warned the dispatcher that Altamirano had a knife and would charge police if confronted.
When officers arrived at the house, located near Seventh Street and Sunland Avenue, the man’s daughter and long-term partner — who later identified themselves to police as Melissa and Lorena German, respectively — told police that Altamirano was distraught after the loss of his parents and was threatening to kill himself with the knife.
“I just came to drop off my daughter before I go to work, but I seen him in the living room, just sitting there,” Melissa German told officers, according to body-cam footage. “And he’s just being suicidal and acting a fool, and they want him gone.” When asked if Altamirano had ever done anything similar in the past, she responded: “Uh, he has a violent past, but it’s been years since he acted up.”
The confrontation with Altamirano began not long after officers arrived at the home around 7:45 a.m., with Altamirano charging out of the house and yelling, “Come on, mutherfucker” at least a half dozen times.
‘I wanna die’
Body-cam footage does show a shirtless Altamirano running directly at an officer with a knife held high, causing the officer and another to quickly retreat. But then Altamirano veered away to take up a position in the street that looked to be 40-50 feet away from anyone.
“I wanna die,” Altamirano shouted at officers from that distance. “Kill me!”
One officer, identified only by the surname Myers in records provided to New Times, fired a gun six times at Altamirano, who had his hands raised in the air and was demanding to be killed. None of the shots appeared to hit Altamirano. From the sidewalk, another officer fired a less-lethal pepper ball gun at Altamirano while several officers yelled at him to get on the ground on numerous occasions.
“No, I’m not getting on the fucking ground,” he replied.
Altamirano paced with the knife for a few seconds before an officer shot him with a 40-millimeter foam baton launcher — a “less-lethal” tool used by officers to stun people — at which point he started to stumble away from the cops. He howled in pain as officers angrily told him to stop moving.
Myers then shot two more times while Altamirano moved behind the police car in the road. Then an officer identified as Cesar Perez put down a less-lethal weapon and took out his handgun, shooting three times at Altamirano, who was no longer blocked from view by the police car. The video shows that the second shot appears to hit Altamirano, who crumbled to the ground and wailed in agony.
Officers moved in quickly to handcuff Altamirano, who moaned in pain for several minutes. Myers and another officer put pressure on Altamirano’s back and spoke to him, encouraging him to keep breathing. About eight minutes after he was shot, one officer said that Altamirano had stopped breathing, though Myers said he was “still breathing a little bit.” The Phoenix Fire Department arrived shortly thereafter, strapped Altamirano on a gurney and took him to the hospital.
After the shooting, speaking to an officer identified as Edwin Garcia in police records, Lorena German held back tears while trying to come to terms with the shooting of her partner of 40 years and the father of her five children.
“He’s never done this before,” Lorena German, Altamirano’s partner of 40 years and the father of her five children, said while holding back tears. “He didn’t threaten anyone, just his self. He said, ‘I want to go with his mom and dad and sister. I’m tired of this life.’”
TJ L’Heureux
Spate of shootings
Altamirano’s killing is being investigated by the Arizona Department of Public Safety, and the Maricopa County Attorney’s Office will determine if criminal charges are merited when that investigation is complete. Phoenix police are also conducting an internal investigation to determine whether the officers acted within department policy.
According to use-of-force and officer-involved-shooting databases on the Phoenix Police Department website, an officer whose badge number matches Myers’ was involved in a fatal shooting of an apparently homeless man wielding scissors in an alley. In that case, there were questions about a language barrier between police and the man, who did not speak English. The shooting was deemed within policy, according to a police database.
An officer with Myers’ badge number was also involved in a use-of-force incident involving a Native American woman in December 2020 — the force is classified as “hard empty hand,” per the database — though the database does not say whether that use of force was within policy or not.
Police databases show that an officer with Perez’s badge number has been involved in eight use-of-force incidents since 2020; six were deemed within policy while two are listed as “not available.” None involved the use of lethal force, per the database.
Garcia did not fire his service weapon in the Altamirano killing, but the same databases show that an officer with his badge number has been involved in 21 use-of-force incidents dating back to 2019, including two that involved the use of lethal force. In one, a September 2020 incident, Garcia fired at a car that rammed into his open car door as he was exiting the vehicle. He did not strike the car. Garcia also deployed lethal force in an incident on May 7, 2023, the use-of-force database notes — though that incident does not appear in the Phoenix Police Department database of critical incidents. Of the 21 use-of-force incidents associated with Garcia, 18 are identified as within policy while three others — including the one in September 2020 — are listed as “not available.”
The Oct. 2 killing of Altamirano was the continuation of a recent string of fatal police shootings. After police killed four people in the first two months of the year — including one who was hit in the heart by a “less-lethal” weapon — there were no fatal police shootings for six months. But in a 54-day span between Aug. 19 and Oct. 11, Phoenix police shot 10 people, killing six of them.
The department and city leaders have faced a mounting chorus of criticism for the run of shootings, which has coincided almost exactly with the beginning of Matt Giordano’s tenure as the city’s new police chief. Activists from several grassroots groups gathered at Phoenix City Hall on Wednesday afternoon to call out Giordano and Phoenix Mayor Kate Gallego over the shooting spree.
Phoenix City Councilmember Anna Hernandez also expressed her concern.
“I implore the chief to get a hold of this department and officer behavior,” Councilmember Anna Hernandez, a progressive whose own brother was gunned down by police, told New Times in a written statement on Wednesday. “We cannot have another epidemic of police violence.”
