The City of Corona released body-worn camera video on Wednesday, September 2, 2026. What it put out is a community incident debrief — the 911 calls from witnesses, a photograph of the injured woman, and the footage from the officer who fired. The shooting happened Friday, July 17, at about 6:28 in the morning, in the 1200 block of East Parkridge Avenue.
This is Riverside County, which is ground I worked for years.
The call was assault with a deadly weapon. A man had struck a 78-year-old woman multiple times with a rock, and he was armed with a knife.
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The officer who responded is a traffic bureau officer with seven years on the job. He arrived on a police motorcycle. He did the right thing first and contacted the 911 callers, then identified the man standing on the sidewalk.
He told him to take a seat. The man said he was good. Told him again, and the man told him to get away. Then he started walking straight at him and pushed the officer’s motorcycle over.
That is where you know. Ninety-nine point nine percent of people, when a cop contacts them, respond and comply. When you get these answers instead, you already know it is going sideways. When the bike goes over, you are in crazy town and it is not going to end well.
The officer kept backing up. He called for assistance. Police say he retreated about 100 feet during the encounter.
And he did not fire.
Then the man pulled a butcher knife and turned toward the 911 callers, who had the sense to drive off. The officer fired after the suspect turned back toward him.
Isaiah Maciel, 25, was pronounced dead at the scene by the Corona Fire Department. The woman had visible injuries and was evaluated by medics. No officer was hurt. The butcher knife and the rock were recovered.
This is an extremely clean shooting, and the officer did a great job. But the reason is what he did before he fired, not what he did when he fired.
There is a school of thought that an unarmed man walking at you is a shooting, on the theory that he might overpower you, knock you out and kill you with your own gun. I am not that guy. Where there is a real mismatch — a 300-pound male suspect against a 100-pound female officer — that argument stands and it is a fair one. But if you are a grown man and it is an even fight, it is what it is. You are going to have to throw hands, or go to a baton, or pepper spray, or a Taser, or just get physical. You do not get to shoot people because they want to fight.
So watch the first half of this again. The man does not have the knife out yet. He is just walking at him. And the officer backs up and gives ground and lets him dictate the pace. There is no hesitation in it — the backing up is tactical, it is creating space. People will tell you that backing up is never what we do. Yes it is. You do not go straight to taking a life when you still have room to work with.
Then everything changes at once. The knife comes out and he turns on the callers. Now you have the twenty-foot problem, and there is no less-lethal answer to it — you cannot put a gun away and reach for a Taser with a butcher knife that close, and there is nobody else there to cover him with anything.
And the reason the officer keeps firing is the thing people watching at home do not understand. People do not drop the way they do in the movies. Early in my career I watched a man take seven rounds from a nine millimeter to the chest and still cover about fifteen feet with a knife in his hand. Watch this video and you can see the first hit register without stopping him.
He dictated every part of this. The officer gave him room right up until room stopped being an option.
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