By Mark Gutglueck
Newly released video and audio recordings of the September 27, 2022 shootout between sheriff’s deputies and Anthony John Graziano reveal that Graziano’s 15-year-old daughter, Savannah, was attempting to surrender when she was killed in a hail a gunfire. In response to a California Public Records Act request by documentary maker and photojournalist Joey Scott, the sheriff’s department released the recordings on March 29, 2024, more than 18 months after the deadly encounter at the side of the I-15 Freeway.
The department maintains that the delay in making the videos available to the public was due in part to a ransomware attack by Russian gangsters in the spring of 2023, some six months after the incident.
The recordings shed new light on the circumstances of Savannah Graziano’s death and appear to conflict with the official version of events offered by the department in the immediate aftermath of the shooting.
Different law enforcement agencies were involved in the events leading up to the shooting, and there were conflicting versions of the initial events, including the murder of John Graziano’s estranged wife/Savannah Graziano’s mother, which occurred early in the events that unfolded over the course of September 26th and 27th, 2022. This confusion was compounded by the consideration that only limited video footage of the violence was available because the department had not met Sheriff Shannon Dicus earlier-stated timetable of outfitting his deputies with body cameras by the end of 2021.
In June 2022, John Graziano, 45, was living in the area of Fontana with his wife, Tracy Martinez, 45, their 15-year-old daughter, Savannah, and their 11-year-old son, Caleb. Over the course of the summer, the couple became estranged and Graziano moved out of the family home, taking Savannah with him. In the weeks thereafter, father and daughter lived out of Graziano’s white 1997 Nissan Frontier pickup truck, sometimes staying motels or camping out in local parks.

At about 7:30 a.m. on Monday, September 26, a parent of a child who attends Cypress Elementary School in Fontana phoned in a 9-1-1 report of a shooting. Several other children, some as young as five years old, also witnessed the shooting while walking to school with their parents.
Witnesses said that Graziano, driving a white 2017 Nissan Frontier pickup truck bearing California license plates 44305G2, fired six to twelve shots at a minivan driven by his estranged wife, Tracy Martinez. The minivan veered off into the curb on Cypress Avenue near Mallory Drive and came to an abrupt halt.
According to witnesses, Graziano then made a U-turn, drove back toward the minivan, and exited his vehicle. As he approached, Martinez bolted from the disabled minivan. Graziano opened fire with a handgun, striking Martinez as she fled. Stray bullets also struck several nearby vehicles, some of them occupied by children on their way to school. Martinez fell to the ground. Graziano approached and pumped at least two more shots into her from close range. He then calmly returned to his vehicle and drove off.
The Fontana Police Department responded to a call of shots fired in the vicinity of Cypress Elementary School. Martinez was found alive but barely conscious and was able to identify Graziano as her assailant. She was transported to a local trauma center, where she was pronounced dead.
An all-points bulletin was issued for Graziano.
Graziano and Martinez had a son together, and Graziano had a son from a previous relationship. Both were located and were determined to be okay and not involved or knowledgeable about the shooting.
An Amber Alert was issued for Graziano’s daughter, Savannah, who was, according to one eyewitness, seated in Graziano’s pickup truck when the Martinez shooting occurred, and was possibly being held against her will.
Law enforcement communications relating to Graziano and his daughter throughout the ordeal, contained multiple points of contradiction. One such discrepancy was that Graziano had encountered Savannah walking down the street shortly after the shooting occurred, despite a witness having stated that the girl had been in the Nissan Frontier at the time the shooting of Martinez had occurred. Word circulated, never verified, that Graziano was hiding in an area straddling the municipal and unincorporated county area of Fontana. It was on the basis of the unverified report that Savannah had been taken against her will or kidnapped that triggered the Amber Alert.
Graziano remained at large for more than 24 hours, but at about 10:25 a.m. Tuesday September 27, two 911 calls were made to the San Bernardino County’s Desert Dispatch Center from an employee at the Pilot Travel Center, known as Store 200, at 5725 Highway 58, near what is referred to as Kramer Junction and or Boron. The employee made a first response to the Amber Alert with his first call and in his second call shortly thereafter reported seeing both Savannah and the 2017 Nissan Frontier pickup truck and that Savannah had purchased two sodas inside the store. He further reported that one of the fuel station’s customers had reported to him that the Nissan Frontier pickup truck matched the vehicle in the Amber Alert. While the caller in his first call apparently reported that the father and daughter had headed south on Highway 395, in his second call he reported that they had “faked” taking that route and had “turned around” to head east on Highway 58 toward Barstow. The video compilation provided to Scott showed a portion of the internal security video at the Kramer Junction Pilot Travel Center during which Savannah Graziano is seen coming to the sales counter, while a portion of the audio of the store clerk’s second call is heard.
Informed that Graziano was heading east on Highway 58, a dispatcher sought assistance from the Highway Patrol but was told the state agency did not have any immediate resources in the area. Thereafter, a sheriff’s deputy spotted the Nissan Frontier traveling at a speed approaching 100 miles per hour near Lenwood, whereupon Graziano departed Highway 58 to the southbound I-15. Given Graziano’s speed, it took deputies a bit of time to catch up with him, at which point Graziano began shooting at his pursuers. Highway Patrol and sheriff’s department helicopters were en route but had not reached the area. One of the pursuing deputies reported to dispatch that at that point Graziano was traveling in excess of 113 miles per hour. As more sheriff’s vehicles came into the pursuit, while Graziano was yet southbound on the I-15, more shots were fired and multiple sheriff’s vehicles were strafed with gunfire, with at least one being struck in the windshield and one veering off into the desert next to the freeway. A Highway Patrol helicopter arrived over the pursuit just as it was reaching the area south of the Wildwash Road exit from the I-15.
The video provided to Scott included footage shot from the Highway Patrol helicopter shows Graziano’s Nissan Frontier passing freeway traffic while he was driving at a speed somewhere between 20 and 30 miles an hour faster than the southbound traffic it is encountering in front of it, as Graziano repeatedly uses the right shoulder of the freeway to drive around those vehicles.
Video footage taken from the CHP helicopter shows that a sheriff’s vehicle had been placed crosswise in the middle of the three southbound lanes just north of an exit from the I-15 in order to create a makeshift roadblock. Behind this barrier two large semi-trucks, a somewhat smaller truck and eight vehicles had come to a stop and another vehicle was slowing when Graziano’s vehicle arrived. Graziano swung to the right to bypass the roadblock, using the right shoulder of the roadway.
As Graziano continued southbound on I-15, approaching the north Stoddard Wells Road exit, a deputy reported additional shots fired, this time from the passenger side window. Seconds later, the CHP helicopter also reported shots fired from the passenger side window.
The day after the incident, on September 28, 2022, Sheriff Dicus said, “Our specialized detectives processed the scene throughout the night, and provided me a briefing this morning. Based on the information, evidence suggests that Savannah Graziano was a participant in shooting at our deputies.”
While the pursuit was continuing south toward Victorville, a motorist just south of Palmdale Road captured video of the truck passing him and firing several shots at deputies. According to the department, that motorist’s vehicle was struck by gunfire from Graziano’s vehicle. When the driver was interviewed after the incident, he said he believed the gunfire came from the passenger side window and that the gun was “leaning out” He attributed the shooting of the gun to the passenger “It must have been someone else because someone was still driving the truck,” he said.
The narrator of the video compilation released to journalist Joey Scott on March 29 stated,it is important to note that the statement of this witness and a deputy over the radio that shots were fired from the passenger window is an indication of what may have happened, not confirmation. This aspect of the investigation is still under investigation.”
The pursuit continued through Victorville and into Hesperia, concluding when Graziano attempted to exit the freeway going against traffic onto the freeway entrance at Main Street in Hesperia, a point at which at least a half dozen sheriff’s deputies in their vehicles were positioned.
The video compilation released to Scott includes a portion of video footage taken from another motorist’s dashcam video of the events immediately leading to that point. That video’s audio recording captures the sounds of Graziano firing upon various vehicles and fire being returned at Graziano’s truck.
In his effort to exit the I-15, Graziano pulled over to the west, that is right, side of the freeway and then made a radical u-turn to head up the winding slope of the freeway on-ramp to get to Main Street. Encountering a fusillade of gunfire, which discouraged him from seeking to continue the wrong way up the on-ramp, he attempted to drive up the unpaved embankment onto Main Street, losing traction as the truck was in the process of surmounting the very steep three or four-feet leading to Main Street. The vehicle then rolled backward down the embankment toward the I-15. At that point, it is unclear but possible that Graziano had been severely injured or perhaps even mortally wounded by the gunfire being trained on his truck. The truck came to a stop near the side of the freeway, roughly 40 feet from the first of two sheriff’s vehicles that were in pursuit of Graziano southbound on the freeway which had pulled to the side when he made his u-turn maneuver in an effort to leave the freeway. Just as the Nissan Frontier was coming to a complete stop, Savannah exited the vehicle.
The video compilation provided to Scott includes video footage taken from a sheriff’s department helicopter that had arrived over the Main Street intersection with the freeway.
According to the narrator of the video compilation, when Savannah exited from the passenger side of the vehicle, she was wearing tactical gear and a helmet.
On September 28, 2022, Sheriff Dicus had described the tactical gear as “a plate carrier on front and [a] tactical helmet.” At that time, Dicus had described the teen as “running toward the deputies” just before she was shot. Furthermore, Dicus and other members of the department said it had not been determined whether Savannah Graziano was shot by deputies or if she had been shot by her father. Dicus further claimed, on September 28, 2022, the deputies did not realize it was Savannah who had gotten out of the Nissan Frontier.
The video released to Scott, however, shot as it is from the distance and angle of an overhead helicopter, does not provide sufficient resolution to make a determination as to whether Savannah Graziano was wearing tactical gear or a helmet. If, indeed, she was so attired, that would beget certain questions, in particular, what sort of gunshot wounds she sustained that led to her death, as the front plate armor and helmet would, presumably, have protected her, to some degree, from head shots and torso shots. The information released to Scott did not include the coroner’s report. The video compilation narrator did, however, state that, “Both Graziano and Savannah were struck by deputy rounds and died of their injuries.”
The 18-month delay in the release of the video footage that brought some of the sheriff’s September 28, 2022 assertions into question has created something of a firestorm on social media, with several observers suggesting that even if Dicus’s statements made the day after the shooting were the product of his ignorance at that time and reflected his sincere beliefs, the department’s refusal to release the footage of the shooting in the days, weeks and months since then evinced an effort by the department to mislead the public.
The video shot from the sheriff’s department helicopter depicts Graziano’s pickup rolling back toward the freeway, at which time the pilot or observer in the helicopter can be heard reporting that gunfire is taking place. After the pickup reaches the shoulder of the freeway, it ends its backward progression and, its momentum toward the freeway petering out, begins to roll back toward the slope, a potential indication that Graziano is completely incapacitated. Just before the vehicle comes to a complete rest with its front driver’s side tire on the dirt beside the shoulder, Savannah Graziano gets out of the pickup on the passenger side of the vehicle, which is closest to the roadway, as the driver’s side of the vehicle is more proximate to the sloping embankment down which the pickup had just descended backwards. She begins to move away from the truck, going roughly ten feet to its side, yet on the paved shoulder of the freeway where she either crouches deeply down or has gone to her hands and knees. The sheriff’s department helicopter pilot or observer can be heard saying, just about two seconds after she emerged from the pickup, “The girl’s out.” She then appears to be moving into a prone position, when roughly three seconds after she began her crouch, it appears as if gunshots or a gunshot has been directed very near her, as dust from the ground just behind her is being kicked up. The helicopter pilot or observer, perhaps in reaction to the gunfire toward her, repeats more firmly, “Alright, the girl’s out, guys. The female juvie is out. She got out on the passenger side.” Roughly nine seconds after she had crouched down, she starts to stand up, and with her body yet hunched over, she begins toward the closest deputy, who is crouched down beside the front driver’s side wheel of his patrol car, which is roughly 35 to 40 feet from the now still Nissan Frontier. The girl makes forward progress of only a few feet before she again goes into what appears to be a full crouch, a position she holds for roughly a second before she rises again into a partial crouch and begins moving with purpose toward the deputy. As a voice over the radio is heard saying, “Does anyone else have eyes in the vehicle to see if there are any other passengers inside…,” she takes six or seven strides toward the deputy and is roughly 15 feet from him, at which point, there is a simultaneous eruption of audible gunfire. Her image on the video is purposely electronically blurred, an indication that she was successfully targeted in the salvos. The helicopter observer can be heard, the lament in his voice apparent, “Ahh, no.” The last utterance from the helicopter video, after Savannah has fallen, is, “Guys, watch your backdrop for across freeway traffic. Watch your crossfire guys.”
The video compilation provided to Scott also includes the recording of the deputy closest to Savannah when she emerged from her father’s pickup.
In that recording after a volley of at least 27 gunshots, the deputy can be heard saying, “Passenger, get out! Passenger, get out! Passenger, get out!” rapidly followed by “Get out! Get out! Get out! Passenger, get out! Get out!” With constant gunshots yet being heard, the deputy commands, “Come here! Come here! Come here! Come here! Hey! Hey! Hey!” Then he says, “Come here! Come to me! Come to me. Come to me! Come to me! Walk! Walk! Walk! Walk! Walk! Walk! Walk! Walk!”
Then, in apparent reaction to the shots being fired at Savannah, he shouts, “Hey! Stop!” There are the sounds of four further shots being fired. “Stop shooting her!” the deputy yells. “He’s in the car! She’s okay. He’s in the car. Stop.”
According to the narrator of the video compilation released to Scott, “You can hear him [the deputy] calling her over and telling other deputies that the person who exited the truck was the passenger and for them to stop firing, but it was too late.”
The combination of the helicopter video and the belt recorder audio makes a convincing showing that Savannah Graziano was complying with the deputy’s instructions and was not advancing aggressively on that deputy or any of the at least six deputies at varying distances behind him when she was shot.
The sheriff’s department officially maintained in the days and weeks following the shooting that Savannah had joined with her father in the firearm attacks upon the deputies in the prelude to her death and that right up to the point of being mortally wounded, she was exhibiting a potentially deadly intent toward the deputies. The deputies firing upon her, the department suggested in 2022, mistook her for her father.
In a number of respects, the department’s release of the compilation of the video snippets and audio recordings, undercuts accusations that have been leveled against the department to the effect that it was engaging in deliberate misrepresentations, hiding implicative evidence of negligence, wanton disregard or wrongdoing on the part of its deputies or engaging in a cover-up. Indeed, the video entails the revelation of several heretofore unknown factors and events in what occurred, including details that are both complimentary to and less than flattering of the several involved deputies’ performances. Nevertheless, the 18-month delay in the release of the videos, audio recordings and materials has fueled speculation and outright accusations that the department was engaged in a selective presentation of facts and what are actual or tantamount to prevarications to avoid revelations regarding questionable or improper actions on the part of department members.
Scott filed his Public Records Act request for the production of materials in the department’s posession relating to the shoot-out with Graziano on September 29, 2022, a full 18 months to the day prior to the department making the materials available. Of note is that in San Bernardino County, the sheriff’s department in 2005 subsumed the previously independent coroner’s office. Moreover, in San Bernardino County, the sheriff’s department is given charge over any investigations relating to shootings by law enforcement personnel that take place within the county, after which findings from those investigations are delivered to the district attorney’s office, which makes a determination as to whether the shootings are to be deemed a legally justifiable use of force. In only one case involving the shooting of a citizen by an on-duty law enforcement officer since 1982 did the district attorney come to a determination that a prosecution against an officer was warranted. There has been deep criticism of the circumstance that allows one branch of the sheriff’s office – the coroner’s division – to carry out the forensic determinations with regard to the deadly actions of another branch of the sheriff’s department. The case of Savannah Graziano’s death involved several department higher-ups, including the sheriff himself, suggesting she was killed by bullets fired from her father’s gun. It was coroner’s division employees, who are hired by and serve at the pleasure of the sheriff himself, who retrieved the bullets which killed Savannah Graziano from her corpse. It was members of the sheriff’s department scientific analysis division who were charged with ascertaining from whose guns those bullets were fired. That the department temporized until last week in releasing that information when it was available as long ago as early October of 2022 is seen by some as an effort by Dicus and the department to withhold pertinent information from the public, information that would have been available much earlier if the scientific investigations laboratory and the coroner’s office were operated under an individual or entity other than the sheriff and his department.
Relatively early on, that is, on September 28, 2022, the sheriff’s department surrendered responsibility for the investigation into the shootout to the California Department of Justice. The sheriff’s department retained control over the coroner’s and other forensic examinations of the evidence, as well as the records and materials documenting what had taken place.
The sheriff’s department exacerbated the perception that it is controlling the ebb and flow of information that is calculated more to serve the reputation of the sheriff’s department than the principle of transparent governance when it cited an event that occurred in March or early April of 2023 – the hacking of the sheriff’s department computer system – to explain why all of the material requested by Scott in his California Public Records Act request and certain of the materials needed by the California Department of Justice to carry out its investigation had not been provided in a timely manner.
Under the California Records Act, governmental entities or agencies have ten business days to respond to such requests and can take an additional 21 days in fulfilling such requests if the production of the requested records, materials or documents presents a clerical challenge. Thus, the department should have been forthcoming with the materials that Scott had requested no later than a date in late October 2022.
Additionally, California’s police transparency statutes, extending to both Senate Bill 1421 and Assembly Bill 748, passed in 2018, mandate the disclosure of records related to police shootings along with information pertaining to the use of force and any information regarding the death or injury of an individual at the hands of a law enforcement officer to be released in a reasonably short time after the involved agency’s conclusion of its own internal investigation of such incidents.
More significantly still, the California Department of Justice has yet to complete its inquiry into the Graziano matter. And while there is no realistic expectation that state investigators with either the California Attorney General’s Office, the state police or the Highway Patrol will churn up any evidence of substantial, substantive or specific wrongdoing on the part of any of the deputies or supervisors caught up in Anthony Graziano’s homicidal rampage, it appears that the sheriff’s department withheld some of the information in its possession from those investigators.
The hijacking of the sheriff’s department’s computer system took place in the very late winter or early spring of 2023, at least five months after the shootout with Graziano. The department did not pass the relevant information or materials in its possession along to Scott or the California State Police/California District Attorney’s Office throughout that duration, and it now is asserting that it has not been able to recover at least some of those materials despite having paid to the Russian mobsters who commandeered the computer data $1.1 million in April 2023 for its return. No explanation has been given as to why there was another ten to 11 month delay in making the materials available after the department was again given access to its own files by the Russian hackers.
Despite Sheriff Dicus saying on September 28, 2022, that the department was carrying out an intense examination to ascertain whether Savannah Graziano fired a weapon at the pursuing deputies during the Nissan Frontier’s progression from the area near Lenwood to its final destination in Hesperia, the department maintains that it has yet to arrive at a final conclusion as to this question. This lack of clarity exists despite simple chemical tests that could have been performed upon Savannah Graziano’s person to determine whether she had powder burns on her arms, hands, neck or face or, if she was fully clothed, whether those clothes exhibited concentrations of gunpowder residue consistent with her having fired any of the several guns alleged to have been present in the cab of the Nissan Frontier.
The department has for some time sustained adverse publicity over its unwillingness or inability or both to provide video evidence to back up its claim that the action its deputies took in dealing with the deranged Graziano was justified. There had been an assumption the department would be able to marshal evidence to show the deputies acted reasonably throughout the ordeal, which was assumed to exist in the form of bodyworn videos shot from the perspective of the pursuing officers and, especially, the ones who had been involved in the firefight near the Main Street exit on the shoulder of the 15 Freeway. That expectation was a product of Dicus’s assertion, early in his tenure as sheriff, that the entirety of his department’s sworn personnel would be outfitted with bodyworn cameras by December 2021.
Dicus was appointed sheriff to succeed John McMahon in July 2021, following McMahon’s decision to retire before completing his second elected term as sheriff. Dicus stood for election in 2022 in his own right and proved victorious in the June 2022 primary election. One of the key elements of Dicus’s ultimate electoral victory was his verbal commitment to departmental transparency. Bolstering that commitment was a previous promise, made shortly after his appointment in the Summer of 2021, that by that year’s end his department would iron out certain technical glitches that existed with the bodyworn camera systems that the county had invested in so that all of the department’s deputies would be videoing from their perspective their activity in the field and their encounters with the public in general and both criminal suspects and arrestees specifically. Dicus said that the bodyworn camera system would be up and running no later than December, 2021.
It turned out, despite Dicus’s expressed anticipation and the assumption that the cameras were functioning as of the end of 2021, the bodyworn cameras were not up and running. Accordingly, the video footage that might very well have shown what the deputies were dealing with in confronting Graziano and that they had acted reasonably given the entirety of the circumstance does not exist.
In the face of the accusations or insinuations that the department, in the immediate aftermath of the shootout, had engaged in misrepresentations relating to Savannah’s participation in the running gun battle between her father and deputies in order to justify her shooting death, Sheriff Dicus turned the tables on his department’s critics, implying or stating that they were the ones who were playing fast and loose with the truth, making assumptions and jumping to conclusions that are not warranted by the facts of the case.
“My hope is that this video will be watched in its entirety and provide insight into the unfortunate events that unfolded that day,” Dicus said with regard to the video compilation which is now in the public domain. “There has been speculation and misrepresentations about this case, and I would ask the public to allow the Department of Justice to complete its independent investigation before reaching a conclusion.”
The timing of the release, on March 29, came during a particularly problematic month for the sheriff’s department. Over a period of less than three weeks, beginning on March 9, there was a rash of no fewer than four use-of-force incidents involving the department’s deputies, including three that resulted in the deaths of civilians.
On March 9, Ryan Gainer, a 15-year-old resident of Apple Valley was shot in the torso what is believed to be three times by a deputy as the youth wielded a bladed garden hoe and galloped toward another deputy who had arrived at the Gainer Family home at 13494 Iroquois Road in response to calls for assistance by a member of the Gainer family. Young Gainer was experiencing what has been represented as “an autistic episode,” during which he assaulted one of his sisters and broke a window and was threatening others with a glass shard after having been disciplined by his parents. He was pronounced dead upon being transported to a local hospital.
On March 19, a Rancho Cucamonga man, Mohd Hijaz, 32, died after he was slammed to the pavement in a confrontation with San Bernardino County sheriff’s deputies.
Members of the department had been called to the 10100 block of Foothill Boulevard, just east of the Foothill/Hermosa Avenue intersection, following a report by a nearby resident that an individual, later determined to be Hijaz, was acting erratically, seeking to open apartment and vehicle doors, and that he had pulled the building’s fire alarm. After locating Hijaz “seated in a bush” and yelling incoherently, deputies reported that Hijaz without warning advanced toward them and refused multiple commands to stop, striking one deputy in the face. According to the department, “a use of force occurred” and Hijaz was transported to a hospital, where he was pronounced dead.
On March 23 in Hesperia, deputies shot and killed 52-year-old Keith Vinyard after deputies, in apparent response to a domestic violence warrant for Vinyard’s arrest, engaged in a vehicle chase in which he attempted to escape and was driving recklessly. After the pursuit ended within the vicinity of the 15400 block of Halinor Street, according to the sheriff’s department, Vinyard refused to comply with commands made by a deputy, whom Vinyard threatened to shoot. While it is unclear whether Vinyard actually possessed a gun, the department claims he armed himself with a “large metal object” as other deputies arrived on scene, at which point, at around 9:50 p.m., he was fatally shot.
On March 26, sheriff’s deputies effected the arrest of Christian Cardenas Alonso, a 36-year-old proprietor of a Hesperia tattoo parlor and a resident of Adelanto, whom the department said was involved in an armed robbery two days previously. A video of the arrest, which took place near the corner of Main Street and E Avenue, was made by a passerby. That video depicts at first three deputies and then a fourth deputy grappling with Alonso, who is face down on the pavement next to his vehicle, with the deputies kneeling at various angles on and over him. At several points, Alonso’s head is being scraped or raked with force against the pavement. Throughout the ordeal, which involves both uniformed deputies and a plainclothes officer, Alonso sustains repeated blows to his head.
The plain-clothed deputy is seen kneeing Alonzo three times with a moderate degree of force. After a fourth deputy approaches and starts to take part in the melee, the plain-clothes deputy then punches Alonso four times as his colleagues are bent over the arrestee with their arms extended, as if they are straining to hold him to the ground. The plain-clothes deputy then repositions himself, at which point he knees Alonso five times with a greater degree of force to the head, then punches him straight down to the head with Alonso’s head against the pavement four times and then knees him to the head again. In the video from that point on, whatever resistance Alonso might have been manifesting ceased and the deputies appear to be effectuating a handcuffing. Alonzo, unlike Gainer, Hijaz and Vinyard, survived his encounter.
The department, while releasing the bodyworn videos of the incident involving Gainer, has not released the video of those with Hijaz, Vinyard and Alonso.