The traffic stop started calmly.
Two Fontana police officers stopped a black sport utility vehicle in Yucaipa, and an officer asked the driver about what appeared to be a missing front license plate. They chatted about camping in the snow (the vehicle had overland camping equipment) and the officer chuckled when the man said he had been arrested before for having illegal fireworks.
The officer asked the driver, whom authorities identified as Alan Metka, 56, to exit his vehicle. His partner, an agent, frisked him to make sure he was not carrying weapons.
The officer searched him and pointed out the obvious height difference, while the officer returned to his police car to analyze Metka's information.
Seconds later, a scream was heard: “He has a gun!”
“Let her go! Let her go!” the officer yelled as he ran toward his partner, who was being held in a headlock.
The Feb. 9 encounter was captured on body camera footage that the Fontana Police Department released Thursday.
During the fight at Yucaipa Boulevard and 14th Street, the officer shot Metka, hitting him near the jaw, Fontana Police Chief Michael Dorsey said in a recorded statement released with the video. A loaded semi-automatic pistol was taken from Metka's pants pocket, he said.
The video shows the officer telling Metka that his front license plate was missing, which Metka denied, and that the window tint seemed too dark.
When the officer asked Metka if he had been arrested, he said that, about two years earlier, he had been arrested for “explosives in public.”
“That's interesting,” the officer said, laughing.
Metka said the arrest was for possession of fireworks and he spent 11 months behind bars.
The officer asked him if he had any weapons. He said no.
As the officer frisked him, she asked, “What is this here?”
“My weapon,” he said.
Then, as the video shows, he grabbed her and put her in a headlock.
The officer's shot cannot be heard in the video. But in the images from the agent's camera he is seen moaning in pain and blood can be seen on the road.
Dorsey said his officers were gang investigators who were in Yucaipa to assist the San Bernardino County Sheriff's Department, which provides police services for the city.
Metka is being held at the West Valley Detention Center in Rancho Cucamonga on suspicion of assault with a deadly weapon on a police officer, resisting an executive officer and being a felon in possession of a firearm, according to police records. San Bernardino County Jail.
The incident is being investigated by the San Bernardino County Sheriff's Department and the District Attorney's office, Dorsey said. The Fontana Police Department, he said, “is also conducting a parallel administrative investigation and we are cooperating fully with the investigating agencies.”
Dorsey said Metka has an “extensive criminal history,” with previous arrests for assault with a deadly weapon, carjacking, robbery, possession of an explosive device and illegal possession of firearms.
Metka was also arrested in 2021 at a gas station in Fontana, where he was allegedly found with several illegal firearms and pipe bombs, according to the Rialto Police Department.
