SANTA MARIA – "It escalated into something that shouldn't have happened", says Bonnie Fout who's mourning the sudden death of her brother, 71 year old Jose Naveja, who was shot and killed by local law enforcement officers Monday night.
Fout says her brother had been staying with her at their home in Old Orcutt for the past month and was eager to return home to Florida when they had an argument Monday night.
"He's an engineer, always had a good job", Fout says fighting back tears, "he has a good family, everyone is professional people as he was and the way they (law enforcement) are portraying him is not the person that he was."
The Santa Barbara County Sheriff's Department says Naveja was first contacted by a deputy at the gas station on Broadway and Clark in Old Orcutt after receiving a 911 call from a woman who said Naveja had a gun.
Bonnie Fout says she was the one who called 911 but adds her brother Jose never threatened her with a gun.
The Sheriff's Department says Naveja refused to surrender and led deputies, the Santa Maria Police Department and the CHP on a slow speed pursuit all the way down Highway 135 and Broadway through Santa Maria ending at the dead end of Preisker Lane on the far north side of the city.
The Sheriff's Department says Naveja got out of his car, and grabbed one of several guns he had thrown out of his vehicle when he was shot and killed by the law enforcement personnel who were on the scene.
Who fired the shots, from which law enforcement agency and how many rounds were fired remains under investigation by the Sheriff's Department.
Naveja is survived by his wife and four children who wonder why he could not have been subdued and taken into custody without the use of deadly force.
"Supposedly they were following him for an hour, he had family, he could have called them on the phone, tell them what is going on, he had a cell phone on him", says Naveja's daughter Stephanie, "I would love to see if anybody called his cell phone, see if they could talk to him, I would love to see the police cameras, because I don't believe at all that my father would ever shoot anybody."
"Whatever happened to him was because he was under a lot of medication", says Bonnie Fout, "because he's surviving cancer and Agent Orange from when he was in Vietnam."
Whether Naveja pointed a gun at law enforcement officers on the scene or even fired the weapon is also under investigation by the Sheriff's Department.
