This incident occurred in January of 2023.
The officers were not hurt. A 47-year-old man who pulled a gun out on Seal Beach police was shot and killed by at least one officer on a residential street Monday night, Jan. 16, authorities said. Officers were called to the 100 block of Old Ranch Road just past 9:35 p.m. after someone called reporting a suspicious person in front of a home, Seal Beach Lt. Julia Clasby said. Officers found the man, who pulled a gun, Clasby said.
At least one officer fired in response. Officers provided life-saving efforts and the suspect was taken to a hospital, but he died, Clasby said. The suspect’s gun was taken from the scene. The man knew someone at the home, Clasby said, though the relationship between the two and why the man was there was not disclosed.
Someone inside the home called police. “It’s not a random incident,” she said. The suspect was identified as Michael Bernard Emch Jr., an Orange County resident who had lived in various places.
A person in the home had a domestic-violence restraining order against Emch, stemming from a July 2022 confrontation in Seal Beach, Clasby said.
The neighborhood where the shooting erupted is off of the 405 Freeway, just across from the Old Ranch Country Club, with two-story, stucco homes on small lots lining the street. “It (the shooting) is just not something you’d imagine happening here,” said Jeremy Gele, 54, who has lived in the area for more than a decade. Monday night, from his home, he heard loud popping but did not know what had happened until the morning after. “I’m hoping everyone in (the neighborhood) is safe and unharmed,” he said. “It really shakes you when something like this happens where you’d least expect.” The Orange County District Attorney’s Office is investigating the circumstances of the officer-involved shooting, she said. Seal Beach detectives were also investigating.
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