Anaheim Officer Won’t Be Charged in Shooting Death

SANTA ANA — The Orange County district attorney’s office decided Friday that an Anaheim police officer would not be prosecuted for shooting to death a 25-year-old criminal suspect following a high speed chase on May 7.

Police said the officer, who has not been identified, fired two shotgun rounds at Gary Boomer after he refused orders to stop and hit the same uniformed officer with his car.

Deputy Dist. Atty. Carolyn Kirkwood said her investigation turned up “insufficient evidence of culpability” in the shooting.

Authorities said the incident began when Boomer’s girlfriend called Anaheim police and Orange County sheriff’s deputies to say that Boomer, who was wanted on a felony assault warrant, was harassing her and had just driven away from her home.

Police and deputies pursued Boomer, who was driving his mother’s car, for 15 minutes at speeds of up to 90 miles per hour on the Riverside Freeway before he took the off-ramp at Imperial Highway. Other officers, alerted by Boomer’s girlfriend that he would be heading for his mother’s home at the Friendly Village mobile home park, were waiting for him there.

With police helicopters hovering above, Boomer drove into the park about 1:15 a.m., but failed to stop, although witnesses said he was ordered to halt by officers. Boomer’s car jumped the curb and hit a uniformed officer. Boomer was shot twice and died at the scene.

Last week, Boomer’s parents filed suit in U.S. District Court against the city of Anaheim disputing the police version of events and alleging civil rights violations.

Jerry Steering, the elder Boomers’ attorney, said that a videotape of the shooting shot from a camera mounted on a police vehicle indicates that Boomer’s “car was stopped when he blasted him the second time. I don’t understand why he shot him the second time.”

Kirkwood, the district attorney handling the criminal charges, declined to discuss the investigation in detail, but said “the videotape was part of the entire body of evidence we reviewed.”

Times staff writer Rene Lynch contributed to this story.