San Bernardino County sheriff's deputies shot and killed a kidnapping suspect Wednesday night as he stood at his open trunk and fired into it — where his captive lay trapped — and the bureaucratic phrase "deputy-involved shooting" somehow became the headline.
The violence began around 10:15 p.m. on Monteverde Drive in Chino Hills, when a witness heard gunshots and screaming. Deputies spotted the suspect's Nissan Altima with Oregon plates speeding away and pursued it roughly a mile before it stopped on Wandering Ridge Drive, according to the San Bernardino County Sheriff's Department.
Surveillance footage obtained by the New York Post shows a passenger exit with hands raised. The driver lingered, opened and closed his door, let the car roll forward, then stepped out with hands up — before changing his mind, returning to the vehicle, and walking to the trunk. He opened it and fired inside.
"The passenger did comply," public information officer Gloria Orejel said. "However, the driver exited the vehicle, approached the trunk of the suspect vehicle and fired a shot into a victim that was inside the trunk."
Deputies opened fire. Both the suspect and the kidnapped man died at the scene. The passenger was taken into custody uninjured. No deputies were hurt.
The Ventura County Star reported the facts but led with the passive formulation — a "deputy-involved shooting" — before getting to the man in the trunk. The Post, to its credit, led with the horror: a kidnapper caught on video executing his captive. The victim, shot at the Monteverde address and then stuffed into the trunk before being shot again in front of deputies, barely registers in the institutional framing.
Meanwhile, 2,500 miles away in Fairfax County, Virginia, another officer faced a lethal threat. Nehemia Fuentes-Banegas, 26, armed with two knives and already self-inflicted with stab wounds, emerged from heavy brush and grabbed an officer's firearm, attempting to disarm him. The officer fired, grazing Fuentes-Banegas. A second officer simultaneously deployed his taser. The officer, a 12-year K9 veteran, is now on restricted duty pending investigation.
Here is what WTOP didn't tell you: Fuentes-Banegas is an illegal immigrant from Honduras who entered the United States through Texas in 2022 and was released into the country by the Biden administration, according to the Department of Homeland Security. ICE has lodged a detainer requesting Fairfax County not release him.
DHS Assistant Secretary Lauren Bis didn't mince words: "Governor Spanberger's sanctuary policies have made the commonwealth a magnet for illegal alien crime." Spanberger signed an executive order on her first day banning state cooperation with ICE.
WJLA reported the ICE detainer and immigration status. WTOP buried both entirely — no mention of where Fuentes-Banegas came from, how he got here, or who let him stay.
In Chino Hills, deputies confronted a man actively executing a captive in his trunk and stopped him. In Annandale, an officer defended his weapon against an illegal immigrant who grabbed for it after a domestic violence call. In both cases, the press default is to frame the police action as the story — not the violence that made it necessary.
The open question: what does it say about our media that a kidnapper firing into a trunk full of his captive gets second billing to the phrase "deputy-involved shooting"?
