OCEANSIDE — Authorities released video footage today of a shootout between law enforcement personnel and a domestic murder suspect who fatally shot himself after being wounded during the exchange of gunfire in northern Oceanside.
The images, captured by uniform-worn cameras and security systems, show 28-year-old Dorian Larkin and pursuing officers driving into a parking lot at a strip mall in the 500 block of Vandegrift Boulevard at about 3 a.m. June 23, following a road chase that began about a half-hour earlier in the Riverside area, according to the Oceanside Police Department.
After jumping out of his still-rolling car, Larkin allegedly turned and shot at officers and sheriff’s deputies with a pistol. Two of them returned fire, leaving him with several non-life-threatening leg wounds, OPD Assistant Chief Sean Marchand said.
The suspect then ran off to the north through a breezeway at the rear of the shopping center and onto Sol Drive. Officers found him sprawled in the roadway there moments later, dead from a self-inflicted gunshot wound to the head, his gun still in his hand.
Though several law enforcement vehicles were damaged by flying bullets during the exchange of gunfire, no officers or bystanders were injured.
The events that led to the shootout began late on the evening of June 22, when 911 callers reported hearing screams and gunshots from inside an apartment in the 500 block of Fredricks Avenue, north of state Route 76 and east of Los Arbolitos Boulevard.
Patrol officers arrived to find the suspect’s girlfriend, 34-year-old Kimberly Foster, dead in the residential unit, and detectives soon identified Larkin as the presumed killer.
Shortly after 2:30 a.m. the following day, deputies with the Riverside County Sheriff’s Department spotted Larkin driving on Interstate 15 near Winchester Road in Temecula. When they tried to stop him, he refused to yield and fled to the south.
The suspect soon re-entered San Diego County, where he passed through Fallbrook on Interstate 15, then headed west, winding up back in Oceanside.
After running over a tire-flattening spike strip that police had laid out in his path, Larkin pulled over into the strip mall near Melba Bishop Park. Moments later, he was exchanging gunfire with Oceanside police Officer Malcolm Cisneros and Riverside County sheriff’s Deputy Richard Schweitzer, then fleeing to the spot where he took his own life, according to police.
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