Authorities Thursday publicly identified the armed man fatally shot by an Escondido Police Department officer when he allegedly pulled a gun on him at the end of a brief high-speed chase.
Johnathan Carroll, 38, was pronounced dead at Palomar Medical Center late Friday afternoon, shortly after the shooting at Bear Valley Parkway and Encino Drive, according to the Escondido Police Department.
The patrolman who shot the suspect, EPD Officer Chandler Hoppal, sustained no injuries during the fatal encounter.
The events that led to the shooting began about 90 minutes earlier when Carroll allegedly wounded a 20-year-old motorist in an apparently random car-to-car shooting near the intersection of Ash Street and Pennsylvania Avenue in Escondido.
The victim, who had a minor bullet wound to his back, gave officers a description of Carroll's car along with its license plate number before being taken to a hospital.
There was no known relationship between the two men, according to police.
A little more than an hour after that shooting, Hoppal spotted Carroll driving his white Mercedes-Benz GL450 in the area of Citrus and Washington avenues in Escondido, near the suspect's home, and tried to pull him over.
Refusing to yield, Carroll sped off, fleeing at speeds exceeding 100 mph while trying to evade arrest, police said. After about 10 minutes, the suspect lost control of his SUV, which struck a curb and skidded to a halt.
Following the crash, Carroll jumped out of his disabled vehicle with a 9mm pistol in his hand, according to police. Hoppal responded by firing a dozen rounds at him from his service handgun.
The suspect, who suffered bullet wounds to the head, abdomen and one of his arms, fired off two shots before collapsing, harmlessly sending one slug into his own SUV and the other in an unknown direction.
The gun Carroll discharged in the car-to-car shooting and during the fatal confrontation with the officer was a non-serialized, home-built type of firearm commonly called a ghost gun, as were two others found in his SUV, according to police.
There also was a loaded rifle magazine and several hundred rounds of 9mm and 40-caliber ammunition in the vehicle, police said.
Hoppal, who has been an officer with the Escondido Police Department for two years, was placed on administrative leave pending completion of investigations into the shooting, as is standard policy in the agency.
Images of the deadly encounter were recorded by Hoppal's uniform-worn camera and will be released to the public within the next two weeks, police said.
