Surveillance video shows officer’s final moments

SAN DIEGO  —  A surveillance video at a City Heights McDonald’s shows the poignant encounter between a San Diego police officer and local boy minutes before the officer was shot and killed by a suicidal gunman.

The Aug. 6 tape, which police released Tuesday, shows Officer Jeremy Henwood walking up to the counter at 5:24 p.m. He appears to take awhile deciding what to order. Moments later, a boy sidles up to the counter beside him and appears to look at his police belt full of equipment. The boy smiles as he and the officer exchange words.

Henwood buys the boy cookies along with a meal for himself, all the while talking to the boy.

After getting a soda at the fountain, Henwood walks out of the frame at 5:28 p.m.

Four minutes later, the officer was shot while driving east on University Avenue near 45th Street. Police found the McDonald’s bag in his patrol car, the food inside still warm.

Authorities said the gunman, Dejon White, 23, had come behind the officer’s car and flashed his headlights. The officer, possibly thinking the motorist was in trouble, pulled into the next lane. White drove alongside him, pointed a shotgun out the window and fired at Henwood, striking him in the head.

White was killed about 30 minutes later when he went to grab a shotgun and was killed in a hail of police gunfire.

He had left behind a two-page suicide note in his nearby apartment.

Several minutes before the officer’s shooting, White had walked up to 23-year-old Martin Hana in the parking lot of an El Cajon-area In-N-Out Burger and shot him in the face. Hana suffered severe facial injuries and is continuing to undergo multiple surgeries to recover.

At Henwood’s funeral Friday, friends and family spoke about his kindness and generosity.

“That was Jeremy. He’d make you smile, then he’d buy you lunch,” his younger brother, Robbie, said.

The boy could not be reached for an interview Tuesday. The boy, 13, told the news website Speak City Heights that he’d asked the officer for 10 cents for a cookie.

According to the website, he said the officer asked him about his goals, and then told the boy as they shared a cookie, ‘Hard work in life will do you well.”