By Nathaniel Percy
The Orange County Register
FULLERTON, Calif. — A Fullerton police corporal who fired five beanbag rounds at a man acting erratically and swinging a belt in front of a McDonald’s nearly two years ago was found to have been justified in doing so by the Orange County district attorney’s office, which released a report on its investigation Thursday, Feb. 26.
The fifth beanbag round fired by the corporal on March 6, 2024, pierced the chest cavity of 50-year-old Alejandro Campos Rios of Buena Park, causing him to bleed profusely. He died at the scene.
| WEBINAR: Interagency coordination for large-scale special events
The DA’s office concluded that the corporal reasonably believed that because of Campos Rios’ erratic behavior, he was a threat to harm himself or others, namely McDonald’s employees who were inside the restaurant but not far from Campos Rios, when the corporal fired the beanbag rounds.
“There is substantial evidence that his actions were reasonable and justified under the circumstances,” the report concludes.
The report earlier noted the concern of the restaurant manager and the corporal’s concern for the first responding officer. The report says the corporal could tell “there was a stress in his voice,” over the radio “like something bad was going on or there’s some heightened, uh, level of awareness.”
Fullerton police officers were called to the restaurant, at 1341 S. Brookhurst Rd., by a manager about 3 a.m. who said two men were acting erratically near the front doors and possibly under the influence of drugs and told a dispatcher she was concerned for the safety of employees who would be arriving soon for the morning shift, police have said in a critical incident video.
Officers arrived and found Campos Rios shirtless and holding a belt near the front door of the restaurant. At times, he swung the belt around his body, yelled at the officers and sang a jingle, body-worn camera video released by the department shows.
Officers tried unsuccessfully to get Campos Rios to drop the belt, but he did not cooperate. As he advanced toward one officer, a Taser was deployed twice with no effect before the corporal fired the five bean bag rounds, the last hitting Campos Rios in the chest, the video shows.
They then applied a chest seal and attempted to help him, at one point applying the pads of a defibrillator, but the machine told them not to shock the man.
Campos Rios also suffered nonpenetrating injuries to the right side of his abdomen, right forearm and left wrist, the DA’s report said. A section on a toxicology examination of Campos Rios’ blood was redacted in the report.
The suspect was initially charged with felony assault on a police officer; the DA’s office charged him with harassment and obstruction of government administration, both misdemeanors
Vince McMahon said he was rushing to his granddaughter’s birthday when he was driving over 100 mph while a Connecticut State Police trooper was trying to pull him over
The suspect was initially located using the Glendale Police Department’s Real Time Crime Center; he was arrested a week following the incident
Gusmane Coulibaly, 27, was arrested after he was identified as one of four men shown in social media video throwing snowballs at police responding to a disorderly crowd
©2026 MediaNews Group, Inc. Visit ocregister.com. Distributed by Tribune Content Agency, LLC.
Engineered for reliability, precision, and mission readiness, CSI products are built to perform when seconds matter most
