It all started at around 2 a.m. when the suspect showed up in a stolen Volvo, went into the 7-Eleven, pointed a gun at the cashier, demanded beer and then told the clerk to leave.
The employee then ran across San Ramon Valley Road into the Safeway Store and yelled at the people in there to call 911 to report an armed robbery.
"He was pretty frantic by the time he got here," Safeway employee Mike Howard said. "He actually walked across the entire parking lot and started running to the door and as soon as he got close, I think he thought he may have been out of sight, so probably for safety."
The clerk's next call was to his boss, the owner of the 7-Eleven.
"He came and he told me that the guy pointed a gun and told him to get out of the store and he said take all of the money, whatever you can," 7-Eleven owner Rahul Kals said.
There were three young men on their way to McDonald's to get something to eat before work and watched as the crime unfolded. They said the man looked like he was shopping and that's when authorities arrived tried to negotiate with the man for more than an hour, and asked him to put his weapon down.
"During those 15 to 20 minutes the cops kept saying, 'put the gun down, let us help you, we don't want to do this, let us help you.' The guy wasn't cooperating and then, straight out of a movie, he took a sip out of his drink, threw the drink and it looked like he pulled the gun up, aimed it at the cops and that's when they shot him," witness James Sanos said.
During the hour-long stanfoff, the gun man was said to be drinking beer from the store. Then at 3:30 a.m. authorities said officers from San Ramon, Danville, Lafayette and the Contra Costa County Sheriff's department were forced to open fire.
"The suspect raised his gun at the officers and a number of officers did fire their weapons," Jimmy Lee from the Contra Costa Sheriff's Department said.
"I was born and raised in San Ramon and this is not something that you'd expect here. Just to see it it's like, 'wow' and it's the first time I have ever seen somebody get killed, I believe they killed him. So, I am kind of in a stage of shock right now and it hasn't really hit me yet," Sanos said.
The name of the suspect has yet to be released by police and they are investigating whether there is a connection between this invident and the smash-and-grab burglary of a weapons' store in Dublin that took place at midnight.
"That's obviously something that we are looking into right now and that part is under investigation," Lee said.
The suspect has yet to be identified and officials are investigating whether this was a case of 'suicide by cop' when people egg on police to shoot them. The officers in this shooting have been put in routine administrative leave.
