A shooting Thursday in Templeton that left a San Luis Obispo County Sheriff's deputy hospitalized and a suspect dead marks the third officer-involved shooting in San Luis Obispo County since June.
Driver Mike Noble witnessed a big rig jackknife on Highway 101 as Thursday's incident unfolded.
“So I was pulling over to see if I could maybe help, but I was on the other side of the freeway and it turned into something different than helping a traffic accident,” Noble said. “A helicopter came, police with guns drawn, over it looked like a body on the side of the road.”
Chad Camping of Cal-Coast Machinery works across the street from where the two incidents Thursday unfolded.
“We kind of saw it going down,” Camping said. “I believe the guy had already been shot at that point but we saw a few officers in the vineyard approaching the car.”
Last month, there was an officer-involved shooting in Nipomo. In June, there was another one, which left three officers injured.
That one happened right up the road from Thursday’s shooting.
“It’s pretty wild. Two things real close to home here so yes, everybody is a little bit on edge,” Camping said.
San Luis Obispo County Sheriff Ian Parkinson said the three officer-involved shootings over the last four months, two of which were also active shooter incidents, left deputies and officers injured, an innocent man dead and all three suspects killed. He adds that despite that, they all "could have been much worse."
