Coroner: Kenwood standoff suspect shot himself

Investigations into last week’s standoff and deadly shootout in Kenwood are evolving quickly, with an autopsy determining that the man at the center of the case, Miguel Angel Garcia, died from a self-inflicted gunshot wound to the chest.

Separately, Napa County sheriff’s investigators announced that a man believed to be Garcia’s murder victim has been identified as 44-year-old Reynaldo Pacheco of Santa Rosa.

Garcia, a 32-year-old Napa resident, was wanted for felony drug and firearm possession when authorities tracked him to a trailer on a rural property on Hoff Road in Kenwood on the night of Tuesday, April 1. A 19-hour standoff ensued, with authorities negotiating with Garcia – considered to be armed and dangerous – over his cell phone. (The occupant of the trailer got out when authorities arrived; Garcia’s girlfriend, who has not been identified, was able to leave the trailer the next morning.)

With SWAT personnel watching the trailer, Garcia confessed to “several violent felonies, including a murder,” according to the Sonoma County Sheriff’s Office in a news release. Among other things, Garcia reportedly told authorities that he had recently killed a man and told them where to find the body.

But after his confessions, “the tone and tenor of the negotiations appeared to change,” the release stated, with Garcia becoming less communicative and apparently suicidal.

Things took a bad turn at around 5:30 p.m. on Wednesday, April 2, when “In an attempt to re-engage the suspect in productive negotiations, the (Sonoma County) Sheriff’s SWAT team put chemical agents into the trailer,” authorities said. This led to what appears to have been an exchange of gunfire, the trailer then began burning, culminating in Garcia emerging from the door and falling to the ground. He was pronounced dead at the scene.

On Monday, the Sonoma County Coroner’s Office completed an autopsy on Garcia and determined that he died not from a SWAT bullet, but from his own.

“Garcia’s cause of death has been determined to be from a single, close-contact gunshot wound to the chest,” authorities announced through a Petaluma Police Department statement. “Miguel Garcia did not suffer any other gunshot wounds.”

The statement added that, “one assault-style rifle has been recovered from within the trailer.” Comments by authorities at the time of the incident indicate the weapon was possibly an AR-15.

Meanwhile, Napa County sheriff’s investigators were following up on Garcia’s apparent confession, and last Friday discovered a body off Sage Canyon Road (Highway 128) near Lake Hennessy, southeast of St. Helena, according to Capt. Steve Blower of the Napa County Sheriff’s Office.

The body was later identified as Reynaldo Pacheco, a Santa Rosa man missing since late March. Authorities believe Garcia kidnapped and killed Pacheco. The nature of their relationship has not been revealed.

According to Sonoma County Sheriff’s Sgt. Shannon McAlvain in a March 31 statement, Pacheco was last seen leaving his home in Santa Rosa on the morning of March 24. He was supposed to return in time to pick up his child from school by 3 p.m., but never did.

At around 2:40 p.m. that day, Pacheco called and asked a friend to pick up his child from school because he was unable to return in time, McAlvain said. Pacheco’s family did not hear from him again and reported him missing shortly after he failed to return home.

Video footage from a Napa convenience store shows Pacheco’s vehicle there at 2:30 p.m., shortly before he called his friend. His debit card was used at the store minutes earlier, McAlvain said.

The multi-pronged investigation is ongoing, with Petaluma police taking the lead due to protocol on fatal incidents involving law enforcement personnel.

Sonoma police Chief Bret Sackett, a sheriff’s lieutenant who was on the scene at the Hoff Road trailer when the shooting occurred, said it was normal in an officer- or deputy-involved fatal incident to have an outside agency investigate. In fact, he said, the Sonoma County Sheriff’s Office just took over the investigation into an April 6 incident involving the Santa Rosa Police Department in which a man died from an apparent medical emergency while in police custody.

Sackett said the Petaluma Police Department’s investigation into the Hoff Road incident could take months to complete and is likely to result in a lengthy report.

Anyone with information on this case is asked to call Petaluma Police Department Detective Tami Shoemaker at 778-4444 or Detective Joel Stemmer at 778-4532.

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