Santa Barbara DA Rules Off-Duty Officer Was Justified in Fatal Melody Market Shooting

Off-duty Santa Maria Police Officer Antonio Peña was justified in fatally shooting 19-year-old Jose Manuel Reyes Rios during a shootout in Orcutt on the night of March 25, the Santa Barbara County District Attorney’s Office ruled in a report released this Friday following its review of the Sheriff’s Office investigation into the shooting.

The report is “based upon investigative reports, video and audio recordings, photographs, and witness interviews, including the voluntary statement” of Officer Peña, the DA’s Office report states, and provides the most complete account to date of the deadly incident outside the Melody Market convenience store at 130 East Foster Road, which was captured on surveillance footage released by the Sheriff’s Office in May.

On the night of the shooting, off-duty officer Peña was driving with his wife and brother-in-law to a birthday party at a friend’s house when they stopped by the convenience store to buy a few items, according to the DA’s report. While Peña went inside the store, two groups of young males — Rios and Cesar Angel Lopez on one side and Alexis Alcantar and Jakob Guzman on the other — confronted each other in the parking lot near Peña’s truck. The fight turned physical as Peña exited the store and walked back to his truck. Then the Hyundai sedan that Rios and Lopez had arrived in accelerated into Alcantar and Guzman, knocking them to the ground. 

Rios then pulled out a handgun and began shooting at Alcantar and Guzman — documented members of the Northwest gang, the report notes — as one of the males from the opposing group started shooting toward Rios. (The third shooter is never named in the report, which notes that a cell phone video recovered from Alcantar’s phone shows him with Guzman in the backseat of the car holding an “unknown make and model black handgun” a couple of minutes before the confrontation with Rios and his companion.)

Rios then runs toward Peña. “At this point Officer Peña and Rios are out of view of the cameras,” the report notes, “but based on witness statements, this is when Officer Peña drew his gun and shot Rios.”

Pena drew his firearm and shouted “Drop the gun!” and “Santa Maria Police!” the report states. Rios then ran past Peña before turning toward him and pointing the gun at him, according to the report. At that point, Peña — “fearing for his life and for the life of his wife and brother-in-law who were trapped inside the truck,” the report reads — opened fire at Rios.

Peña first fired three shots at Rios before pausing, the report states, but Peña said he saw a muzzle flash from Rios’s firearm and, again thinking he would be shot, fired at Rios at least another 13 times. (According to the report, investigators recovered 17 cartridge cases near Peña’s truck, which California Department of Justice ballistics experts determined were fired from Peña’s firearm.) 

Rios was pronounced dead at the scene, and a Glock-style 9mm pistol with no serial number “best described as a ‘ghost gun’” was recovered near his body, the report states, along with a satchel containing “an additional black magazine fitting the ghost gun that contained nine live rounds.” In addition, four expended cartridge cases from the ghost gun were recovered at the scene: two near the front of Melody Market, where Rios is seen on surveillance footage shooting at Alcantar, and another two near Rios’s body.

According to an April 4 autopsy, it was determined “Rios suffered 12 gunshot wounds to his torso, buttocks, right arm and left leg.” His cause of death was ruled multiple gunshot wounds, and his manner of death was certified as a homicide.

The report states that per Penal Code section 835a, “the actions taken by Officer Peña were reasonable based on the facts known and perceived by him at the time of the shooting”; he “reasonably believed that Rios posed an imminent threat of serious bodily injury or death to himself, his wife and brother-in-law inside the truck, and any other people in the vicinity of this location”; and he “was forced to intervene to protect himself and the lives of others in the cross-fire.” 

“Any reasonable law enforcement officer would perceive Rios’ actions as an immediate lethal threat to anyone in the immediate vicinity,” the report concludes. “Therefore, Officer Peña’s use of lethal force was justified and he bears no state criminal liability for his actions.”

The DA’s decision in the Melody Market shooting is only the most recent instance in which the DA has ruled in favor of an officer involved in a North County shooting. This July, the DA ruled another Santa Maria police officer, Erik Hesch, was justified in using deadly force on October 30, 2022, when he fatally shot Salvador Qual Maceda, 36, a man armed with knives who attempted to break into an apartment occupied by a woman and her child. And in November 2022, Santa Barbara Sheriff’s Deputies Ross VanTassel and Yeshella Jimenez’s non-fatal shooting of an unarmed Lompoc man in February 2022 was also officially ruled as a “justified use of force.” 

The Independent reached out to the DA’s Office to determine if criminal charges had been filed against any of the other subjects involved in the Melody Market incident, including the driver of Hyundai that struck Alcantar and Guzman or the unnamed third shooter, but did not receive a response as of deadline.

The DA’s report on the Melody Market shooting can be read in full here.