Police And Mental Health: Deputy Kills Bipolar California Mother During Car Chase

A California sheriff deputy shot and killed a mother and business owner Sunday after she took police on a vehicle chase through multiple counties, according to local reports. She may have been the latest mentally ill person in the U.S. to be killed by police after a 911 call.

The Stanislaus County Sheriff Department and the Ripon Police Department provided new details Tuesday on the fatal encounter, which began after a security guard at a local Hampton Inn and Suites called 911 on Evin Olsen. The 46 year old then fled from police, leading them on a 50 mile an hour chase across two counties that ended with Olsen's death.

Olsen was unarmed, but during the course of the chase she became surrounded in Ripon, a small town about 80 miles West of San Francisco. While attempting to escape a deputy believed she poised a deadly threat to responding officers, Ripon Police Chief Edward Ormonde said at a Tuesday press conference.

"At some point and time during that contact the vehicle went into reverse towards two deputies and one of the Ripon officers,” Ormonde said.

That's when Stanislaus County Sheriff's Deputy Justin Wall shot at least four times at Olsen, who managed to drive away despite being struck by the gunfire. Olsen then crashed her white Volkswagen coupe into a nearby house. She was pronounced dead at the scene. The incident was under investigation.

Olsen's husband, Hanibal Yadegar, said his wife was bipolar and was in the middle of a manic episode that began when she stopped taking her medication. Yadegar and Olsen, who also went by the last name Yadegar, owned the Barkin' Dog Grill in Modesto, which they opened in 2004.

Yadegar met with police officials Tuesday and afterward told the Modesto Bee that his wife was not a threat, and should not have been shot.

“My question for him (one of the officials) was what danger was she that justified the shooting? His answer was that we are investigating that. My other question was that why with all of those officers present, at least four were present, why did only one them discharge his weapon? If she was such a danger, my assumption is then everyone would be shooting," Yadegar said. "The bottom line is this woman was ill."

Yadegar called police to the family home just last week after Olsen kicked him out of the house for trying to get her to take her medication, a police spokesperson told the Bee. The spokesperson said there was no history of calls to the home, which Yadegar and Olsen share with their 9-year-old son.

According to the Washington Post's database of police shootings, at least 241 people fatally shot by police in 2016 were suffering from mental illness. That's a quarter of all fatal police shootings. In 2015, people suffering from mental illness made up nearly exactly the same proportion of fatal police shootings.