Oakland Police Department officials are giving briefings to all OPD officers about the events of March 21 during which four of their comrades were gunned down by a California parolee. The briefings gave this account of the incident:
Sgt. MarkDunakin, 40, who had been with the motorcycle unit for three years and was training Officer John Hege, 41, a newcomer to the detail, pulled parolee Lovelle Mixon, 26, over for running a stop sign at MacArthur and 77th Avenue.
Police have since said Mixon is suspected of having raped two women at gunpoint that morning and of having committed other sexual assaults in recent months, but Dunakin had no way of knowing that at the time.
Dunakin checked Mixon's driver's license and discovered that the number belonged to another person. Hege, who had been a few blocks away, arrived and with Dunakin walked toward Mixon's car to arrest him.
Mixon, apparently seeing the officers approach, leaned out his car window and shot Dunakin in the neck. Hege turned to try to find cover and was shot in the back of the head.
Mixon then stood over the two in the street and fired again, but both those rounds were stopped by the officers' bulletproof vests.
Two hours later, the SWAT team officers - acting on patrol Capt. Rick Orozco's orders - broke down the door to the apartment where Mixon was hiding. Mixon was waiting for them.
Sgt. Ervin Romans, 43, who was leading the raid, was shot in the face just three feet inside the apartment. Mixon then retreated to a closet and resumed firing through the walls with an SKS assault rifle, killing Officer Daniel Sakai, 35, and wounding another officer, Pat Gonzales, before being shot to death himself.
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