Incident: October 27, 2025, San Jose, California. District Attorney’s report released August 19, 2026. Bodycam excerpt released August 20, 2026.
At about 7:30 on the evening of October 27, 2025, a Santa Clara County deputy stopped a car at Fruitdale Avenue and Leigh Avenue for expired registration tags.
That is the entire reason for the contact. Expired tags. You never know what is in the car until you walk up on it.
Free — the opening chapterUnits Are SurroundedFive shootings in five months between members of the Soboba Indian Reservation and law enforcement in the Hemet area of Riverside County. My story about being in the middle of it. The full book is coming.Read how it starts
Jose Neftali Martinez-Nolasco, 43, drove a short distance, stopped, refused to get out, and barricaded the windows from inside the car.
What followed was two hours. Deputies brought a negotiator. They brought a psychiatric emergency team. They gave commands in two languages. They put up a drone. He told them he was suicidal, that he had tried to kill himself earlier that week, that he would rather die than go back to jail, and that the only way this ended was if they killed him. He refused every resource offered.
At about 9:30, deputies breached the rear window and deployed pepper balls — roughly thirteen to seventeen of them. He came out with a large knife. A 40mm round knocked him to the ground. He got back up. A second 40mm volley did nothing.
Then he charged at a dead run.
Two deputies fired six rounds — three from a rifle, three from a pistol, confirmed by casing count. The distance was measured at approximately twenty feet. The knife had a nine-inch blade and was more than thirteen inches overall. Six rounds, six wounds: two to the torso were the cause of death, plus the right hand, right wrist, left thigh and a graze to the neck. No deputies were injured. He was pronounced at 10:16.
Toxicology found methamphetamine at 1,800 nanograms per milliliter, amphetamine at 91, and a blood alcohol level of 0.090.
Now the footage.
This is the case to keep in your pocket the next time somebody asks why officers do not just use less-lethal. They did. Three separate times, in escalating order, and it is all on video — pepper balls exploding in powder around him, then 40mm impact rounds. He was knocked flat by a 40 and stood back up with the knife still in his hand. A second volley did not slow him down at all.
Less-lethal is a tool, not a guarantee. It fails often enough that no officer should ever plan around it working, and this video is the clearest example of that failure you are going to find.
Twenty feet, measured, and a full-speed charge with a thirteen-inch blade. There is nothing available at that range that is not lethal force. People will argue Tueller and the twenty-one foot rule in both directions on this — the DA did not use it. He used ability, opportunity and intent, which is the correct framework and the one that actually decides these cases.
One caution on the wound map: the hand and wrist hits are not deputies shooting at the knife. That is what six rounds at a man running at you with a blade extended looks like.
The Santa Clara County District Attorney found the shooting lawful and filed no charges, writing that the evidence overwhelmingly shows he had no interest in resolving the situation peacefully or accepting any of the resources or assistance deputies offered. San Jose PD Homicide investigated.
The DA released an excerpt, not the two hours. What the public gets to see is the last ninety seconds of a very long night.
This is the third case on this week’s list where a man wanted the police to kill him and would not do it himself. That is not a rare call. It happens a couple of times a week somewhere, and the officers who catch it are the ones who carry the investigation, the lawsuit and the rest of it afterward.
Units Are Surrounded
The new book from Ray Dietrich. Five shootings in five months in Riverside County. The full book is coming - read how it starts, free.
