San Diego police officer killed, another injured in fiery crash following brief pursuit

SAN DIEGO — A San Diego police officer was killed and a second was seriously injured in a fiery crash following a brief pursuit in Clairemont late Monday, officials said.

The driver of the car police had been chasing also died, San Diego Police Chief Scott Wahl told reporters at an early morning news conference.

Police did not release the names of either Tuesday morning. The chief said the department was still in the process of notifying members of the officer’s family.

“I can’t put into words the feelings that come at a time like this,” said Wahl, standing with Mayor Todd Gloria and others. “When we have police officers coming to work, to make a difference, to help those in need, and they put their lives on the line for people they don’t even know. Last night, we lost a good one.”

The crash happened just after 11:30 p.m. on Clairemont Mesa Boulevard west of Interstate 805.

Wahl said officers spotted a vehicle traveling at “a high rate of speed” on Clairemont Mesa Boulevard and tried to pull it over. The driver kept going, and the officers briefly gave chase, but the high speeds led a supervisor to call off the pursuit, the chief said.

Two other officers were driving together in the same car, responding to the incident, when the fleeing car slammed into the side of their patrol vehicle, he said.

One of the officers died at the scene, as did the suspect. The other officer was taken to a hospital and was in the intensive care unit. The chief said the officer was critically injured and “fighting for his life.” The San Diego Police Officers Association, which is the police officers’ union, said the officer who died had been driving the patrol vehicle, and the survivor was the passenger.

Wahl said two other vehicles were also involved in the crash. “It appears those drivers are OK, with no significant injuries,” he said.

Wahl said that “due to the enormity of this situation and all the emotion that’s behind it,” he’s asked the California Highway Patrol to conduct an independent investigation of the crash and do “a full reconstruction of exactly what happened.”

The crash prompted an 11-99 call over police radios, code for “officer down.” Several officers raced to the scene, and dispatchers asked them to grab their fire extinguisher when they arrived. As some first responders tended to the injured, police officers blocked and rerouted traffic and tried to preserve evidence. CHP officers quickly shut down the off-ramps from I-805 at Clairemont Mesa Boulevard, just a few blocks from the crash scene.

The northbound and southbound off-ramps from Interstate 805 to westbound Clairemont Mesa remained closed Tuesday morning because of the crash investigation, Caltrans reported on X, formerly known as Twitter. The ramps were reopened by the middle of Tuesday afternoon.

Early Tuesday, a procession of police cars accompanied the body of the police officer as it was taken to the county medical examiner’s office in Kearny Mesa, footage from Fox 5 showed.

“Keep this officer’s family in your prayers and look out for one another right now,” Wahl said in a message to his fellow police officers. “We just finished giving lineup to the day watch officers. They have to go to work, there’s a job that has to be done. This is going to weigh heavy on their hearts, but we have a job to do.”

The San Diego Police Officers Association said a fund has been set up to assist the families of the two officers in the crash.

The fund is being handled by the Peace Officers Research Association of California, or PORAC, and it had raised more than $13,000 by Tuesday afternoon. A link to the donation page can be found at sdpoa.org. It can also be found directly on the PORAC website at https://porac.org/fundraiser/sandiegopd_officers/.

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(San Diego Union-Tribune staff writer Karen Kucher contributed to this report.)