Police shoot armed man at Petaluma apartment complex

Petaluma police shot a man Tuesday who had a gun at an apartment complex near Casa Grande High School, sending the school and surrounding neighborhood in lockdown during the incident.

The incident began around noon as a domestic dispute at The Vineyard apartment complex, formerly known as The Enclave, at 1 Lakeville Circle.

Petaluma Police Lt. Tim Lyons said responding officers found a male suspect who appeared to be intoxicated and was threatening to commit suicide, at one point attempting to shoot himself in the head.

The incident led officials to issue a “shelter in place” order at 12:30 p.m., which prevented people from returning to or leaving their apartments or residences during the standoff and for hours afterward.

“He produced a firearm and made some suicidal threats,” Lyons said. “He pointed his weapon at the officers in a threatening manner.”

Officers negotiated with the suspect. Just before 2 p.m., the suspect checked the firearm and appeared to reload it and then pointed the weapon at the officers, Lyons said. He did not immediately know the type of gun the suspect brandished.

He said multiple officers discharged their weapons, injuring the suspect. He said the suspect was transported to a local hospital with nonlethal wounds. The suspect was in the hospital on Wednesday recovering from multiple gunshot wounds, Lyons said.

No Petaluma officers were injured.

There was no immediate word about the identity of the wounded man, but residents said he appeared to be in his 20s.

The shooting is being investigated by the Sonoma County Sheriff’s Office as is standard for officer-involved shootings.

Dennis Allen, a retired psychologist who lives in the apartment complex, said he noticed people gathered outside his unit Tuesday afternoon.

When he went outside to ask them what was happening, they told him a man in a red shirt had a gun. He returned to his second-story unit, went out on the balcony and saw the man near a white truck talking to someone he assumed was a police officer.

At the time, a large number of police officers and residents were blocked from going into an area of the complex comprising perhaps 60 units, he said.

About half an hour later, Allen said he heard what he described as “a volley of at least seven shots.”

“It was amazing how loud the gunshots were and how compressed they were,” Allen said.

Police from both Rohnert Park and Petaluma initially cordoned off a large area with yellow crime scene tape, but as the afternoon wore on they allowed some residents back into their apartments. Behind the police tape, the door to unit 132 was ajar most of the afternoon and into the early evening. A pile of clothes in front of the unit marked where the man was shot, residents said.

(Press Democrat Staff Writer Kevin McCallum contributed to this report.)