CAMPBELL — A police sergeant has been cleared of criminal liability for fatally shooting a man wrestling with another officer for a gun during a domestic violence call at a Campbell apartment last year, the Santa Clara County District Attorney’s Office announced Friday.
The man who died, 31-year-old Miguel Gomez, fired a shot from his 9mm semiautomatic handgun at officers in the middle of the living room as he was struggling with Officer Stevie Munoz, prompting Sgt. Najib Magee to shoot Gomez three times at close range in the early morning hours of March 19, 2024.
The district attorney’s office outlined its decision not to file any charges against Magee in a report released Friday, accompanied by excerpts of police body-camera footage of the shooting.
Prosecutor Rob Baker, who authored the report, noted that Magee and Munoz were called to respond to a man who had prompted his live-in girlfriend, watching over her two children, to contact 911. Gomez, apparently in the midst of a lengthy meth binge, was reportedly acting erratically and told the woman, with whom he shared a daughter, to barricade herself and the two children in a bedroom.
Soon after police arrived, Munoz tackled Gomez as he ran toward the bedroom while holding a gun, which is clearly shown in the body-camera footage of a third officer. A shot was fired from Gomez’s gun, and Magee shot Gomez out of fear that Munoz had been shot and that Gomez was going to shoot again, Baker wrote.
“The two officers put themselves directly in harm’s way to protect two young children and fellow officers from the threat of great bodily injury or death posed by Miguel Gomez,” the report states. “The officers reasonably believed they needed to use deadly force, and such force was necessary and reasonable under the circumstances.”
According to police and prosecutors, on the night before the shooting, Gomez’s girlfriend — identified only as Jane Doe in the report — contacted police to report that her “on-again, off-again boyfriend” had been acting erratically and had not slept in four days because of repeated methamphetamine consumption. She reported that Gomez had been living at her South Bascom Avenue apartment.
Gomez had apparently told her to isolate herself and her two children — ages 6 years and 9 months — in a bedroom, after which he was seen “laughing uncontrollably while wrapped in a blanket laying on the living room floor,” according to the report. That prompted Doe to contact 911 again via text message at 2:57 a.m. the morning of the shooting.
Police officers arrived just after 3 a.m. They texted Doe to leave the apartment to meet up with them, and she told them Gomez was in the living room while her children were in a rear bedroom, the report states. Officers looked up Gomez in a criminal database and confirmed that Doe had a peaceful-contact domestic violence restraining order against Gomez, and that he had an active misdemeanor domestic violence arrest warrant issued for him.
Baker wrote that Magee established a plan for the officers to enter the apartment, wake up Gomez and check on the children. Magee, Munoz and two other officers opened the front door using Doe’s key and announced themselves to Gomez. Officers then heard the sound of a handgun being chambered, the report said.
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Munoz ordered Gomez to stop where he was, but Gomez instead ran into a hallway leading to the rear bedroom, prompting Munoz to chase after Gomez and tackle him to the floor. Gomez fired a 9mm round in the direction of Magee and another officer that hit the ceiling, and after Munoz struggled to pin down Gomez’s handgun, Magee fired a shot at Gomez’s torso, then twice more at Gomez’s head.
In the video released with the report, one of the children can be heard calling for their father in the moments after the shooting.
When asked about why he shot Gomez in the head, Magee told investigators that after the first shot, he could no longer cleanly aim at Gomez’s torso because of the physical struggle still happening with Munoz, and that Gomez’s head was the only clear shot he had.
Munoz told investigators that he ran after Gomez because he couldn’t “let him get to the kids’ room.”
An autopsy confirmed that Gomez died from gunshot injuries in his chest, face and head. Doe would later tell investigators that “her goal was not for (Gomez) to be arrested, but to have the police get him out of her apartment so she and her children would be safe.” She also reportedly said “no” when the responding officers asked if Gomez had a gun in the apartment.
