The off-duty San Bernardino County Sheriff’s Department narcotics detective who on October 27 intervened to end the high-speed flight of the suspect who had an hour previously gunned down one of his colleagues has been identified.
Shortly after noon on October 22, Angelo Saldivar, who was at that time living at 6323 Ashton Court in San Bernardino, traveled by motorcycle to 12346 Hollyhock Drive in Rancho Cucamonga in Rancho Cucamonga, a condominium complex where he had previously resided with his former wife, Veronica Garcia Saldivar, also known as Veronica Garcia Zaragosa, and the couple’s daughter in Unit 2. On November 13, 2024, Veronica Garcia Saldivar Zaragosa had initiated divorce proceedings against Saldivar, which were concluded on July 30, 2025, when a divorce decree was granted, with the notice of the entry of judgment filed on August 20, 2025.
On October 27, Saldivar had come to Rancho Cucamonga on a misbegotten mission to forge a reconciliation with his ex-wife, an effort which, likely moribund from the outset, escalated into an anger-filled verbal altercation. Saldivar’s shouts and Garcia Saldivar Zaragosa’s screams resulted in neighbors making 9-1-1 calls to report the disturbance, one of which reported that the male involved in the family altercation, now known to have been Saldivar, was seeking to force Gacrcia Saldivar Zaragosa into her car at gunpoint.
Both Angelo and Saldivar are known to have owned numerous firearms. At some point after the former couple had begun their argument but before responding law enforcement officers arrived, at least two and perhaps as many as four gunshots rang out.
The San Bernardino County Sheriff’s Department serves as the contract law enforcement agency for the City of Rancho Cucamonga. Deputy Andrew Nuñez was among the first two deputies to respond to the 12300 block of Hollyhock Drive.
Upon sheriff’s department vehicles reaching Hollyhock Drive, Angelo Saldivar retreated into the condominium he formerly shared with his wife and their teenage daughter. It is believed he fortified himself with at least one and perhaps two of his wife’s firearms in addition to his handgun at that point.
When, after a short interlude inside the condominium Angelo Saldivar emerged, Nuñez, 27, a five-year veteran of the sheriff’s department who had been stationed in Rancho Cucamonga for four of those years, was the closest deputy to the condominium’s entrance. It is not clear whether Nuñez had oriented himself properly as to location or whether he knew that the domestic disturbance was centered at Unit 2 at the 12346 Hollyhock Drive address. To the nearby residents who were observing the goings-on, it did not appear that Nuñez, who was standing near his patrol unit with the driver’s side door open, saw Angelo Saldivar on the porch or, if he did, recognized he was the individual at the center of the incident he had been called to. Saldivar, at that point outside Nuñez’s field of vision, raised the gun and fired a single shot at the deputy, who was no more than 50 to 55 feet away, hitting him in the head at approximately 12:31 p.m.
As those who saw Nuñez felled and others in the area ducked for cover, Saldivar went back into the condominium. There are conflicting reports as to whether he fired more shots at other deputies on the scene or ones who arrived shortly thereafter, or if the gun shots heard by some bystanders were ones fired by deputies positioned outside the bystanders’ line of sight. At some point, Saldivar either exited the condominium from an alternate exit at the back of the building or found his way into the enclosure of another unit and from there made his way to his motorcycle, donned his helmet and with one or perhaps two of his wife’s firearms in a knapsack on his back and his own weapon in his pocket, quickly rumbled away.
Deputies, at that point recognizing the motorcyclist was the alleged gunman, sought to chase him up Day Creek Boulevard, as he put increasingly more distance between them. Because of his speed and momentum, he overshot the entrance onto the eastbound 210 Freeway, which would have taken him back to San Bernardino. Instead, he braked radically and managed to make his way onto the 210 Freeway headed west. There ensued a chase, with the motorcycle far ahead of the pack, accelerating to a speed well in excess of 120 miles per hour and, at one point for a short distance, reaching nearly 150 miles per hour.
Despite Saldivar’s desperate and bold daring, his speed and the manner in which he was able to outdistance his pursuers on the ground, his flight was in vain, as a sheriff’s helicopter had been dispatched to the Hollyhock Drive location immediately upon the first reports of shots fired on the order of fifteen or twenty minutes earlier. From their aerial perspective, observers in the helicopter had a clear bead on the motorcycle, which was easy to follow, given its speed differential from all of the vehicles it was rapidly passing. Less than a minute later the KTLA Sky5 helicopter was also hovering overhead, broadcasting the chase in real time, in moving images which included a speedometer in the upper right hand corner of the video frame, displaying the motorcycle’s speed.
For the most part outrunning his immediate pursuers on the ground yet unable to elude being trailed and seen as at what was at first a handful of patrol units from the sheriff’s department were soon joined by what then became dozens of other law enforcement agencies, including the Upland Police Department, he Highway Patrol, the Claremont Police Department, the La Verne Police Department and the Los Angeles Sheriff’s Department, Saldivar appeared headed toward the heart of the Los Angeles megalopolis. At Fruit street in La Verne, however, he abruptly exited from the freeway, turned south and doubled back onto the freeway, heading east. He accelerated rapidly, leaving his pursuers well behind him and then slowed to a respectable 68-to 70 miles per hour in the Diamond/High-Occupancy-Vehicle inner lane, seemingly trying to blend in with the traffic around him, as if he were attempting to visually lose himself among the other vehicles. In short order, a California Highway motorcycle moved up close behind him and then went to his left so that the Highway Patrol cycle’s front wheel was nearly even with Saldivar’s back wheel. That jolted Saldivar, who glanced back to his left as if to confirm what he had seen in his mirror or out of the corner of his eye, at which point he accelerated his machine up to somewhere in the vicinity of 85 miles per hour once again.
Having pulled ahead of the Highway Patrol motorbike, he slowed somewhat and took both hands off the handlebars as he fidgeted around and pulled a gun out of his backpack and retrieved bullets from his pockets, which he appeared to be loading into the chamber of the gun.
Near the Campus Avenue exit of the eastbound 210 shortly after 1:30 p.m. Saldivar was moving up on a slower-moving vehicle in the Diamond Lane, this time a gray Toyota. As Saldivar was veering the motorcycle slightly left to pass the car on the left, just as had been the case several hundred times over the previous fifteen minutes or so, the Toyota made an at first subtle drift to its left followed by a somewhat sharper movement across the yellow line separating the Diamond Lane from the inner freeway shoulder. Saldivar reacted to adjust, but at the speed he was traveling – about 68 miles per hour – he did not do so in time to avoid having the motorcycle’s front tire plunge into the Toyota’s driver’s side of the car. The impact launched Saldivar in an arc headed over the hood of the car as the driver deftly steered right, avoiding hitting Saldivar who flipped in mid-air and landed on his back on the shoulder of the road.
It appeared that two firearms that were in the backpack fell out onto the pavement, when Saldivar’s arms came out of the rucksack’s straps as he was tumbling before coming into contact with the ground.
The motorcycle, meanwhile, careened more sharply leftward than the rider it had now lost, hitting into the retaining while between the eastbound and westbound lanes of the freeway, then bouncing and flipping to come down, temporarily, on Salvidar, as both the bike’s and the man’s momentum carried them eastward.
Within three minutes, at least 21 law enforcement vehicles were parked across four of the lanes west and behind where Saldivar came to rest. Several officers swarmed him. In his collision with the Toyota, Saldivar had lost possession of the three firearms. Moreover, he had been incapacitated by the injuries he had sustained. He was taken into custody at once and handcuffed. An overhead video taken from a hovering helicopter showed that eventually he was sitting up as paramedics administered to him and he was loaded onto a stretcher and transported from the crash site on the 210 to a hospital via helicopter.
The day of Nuñez’s shooting and Saldivar’s arrest it was disclosed that the driver of the gray Toyota was an off-duty San Bernardino County Sheriff’s Department narcotics division deputy who fortuitously happened to be in the right place at the right time who took the opportunity presented to him to act to bring Saldivar’s mad dash to an end. The detective was not identified by name, however.
On Saturday, November 22, the California Narcotic Officers’ Association presented Detective Shaun Wallen with the President’s Award for Heroism, disclosing in doing so that he was the driver of the Toyota. At the same ceremony, Wallen was recognized by California Highway Patrol Commissioner Sean Duryee with the Highway Patrol Commissioner’s Coin at the same ceremony, which was held at a location that was not disclosed because of security considerations.
On the Facebook page for the Rancho Cucamonga Police Department, which is a division of the San Bernardino County Sheriff’s Department, Sheriff Shannon Dicus posted, “Thank you to the CNOA Board of Directors for honoring San Bernardino County. California Highway Patrol Commissioner Sean Duryee wanted Detective Wallen to know just how impressed he was with his heroic actions. Detective Wallen placed himself in harm’s way for the safety of others in the moments following the death of Deputy Andrew Nunez. I couldn’t be more proud of Detective Wallen and the courage he showed during an unthinkably difficult time.”
Wallen, who has now been with the sheriff’s department for 18 years, nearly ten years ago was among the law enforcement officers who responded to the December 2, 2015 San Bernardino Massacre, when Syed Rizwan Farook, an employee of the San Bernardino County Department of Public Health, and his wife, Tashfeen Malik, using automatic and semi-automatic weapons opened fire on about 90 employees of the San Bernardino County Public Health Department during a training event/Christmas Party at the Inland Regional Center in San Bernardino, killing 14 and seriously injuring 22 others. Wallen participated in the ensuing shootout with Farook and Malik on San Bernardino Avenue just east of Sheddon Drive near the boundary between the cities of San Bernardino and Redlands.
In 2018, Wallen was presented with the Public Safety Officer Medal of Valor by President Donald Trump for his actions during that confrontation involving Farook, Malik and members of the San Bernardino Police Department and the San Bernardino County Sheriff’s Department.