Around 3:30 p.m. Sunday, Anaheim Police were asked by family members to check on Monique Jenee Deckard because she had been acting strangely and they could not locate her. A little more than two hours later, the 43-year-old was dead from Anaheim's first officer-involved shooting of 2015.
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Friends of family members had told dispatchers that Deckard “had a history of instability” and was trying to buy a firearm, but when officers went to her apartment in the 900 block of South Roberts Street, they could not find her, says Lt. Bob Dunn, the Anaheim Police spokesman.
Then, at 5:30 p.m., a stabbing was reported at a laundromat in the 900 block of South Euclid Street, where a female with a knife attacked a female laundromat patron, says Dunn, who adds the lady armed with the knife fled the business with officers on the way.
Area residents and business owners knew the woman and directed cops to Deckard's apartment, where she lives alone, but on the other side of her closed front door she refused to come out to speak with officers, Dunn said.
Before an Anaheim Police negotiator arrived on scene, Deckard emerged from the apartment armed with two knives and charged officers who were in the apartment complex courtyard, Dunn said.
“Several” officers were involved in the shooting where Deckard was struck by gunfire, treated by paramedics and taken to a local hospital, where she was pronounced dead shortly after arrival, Dunn said.
No officers were injured, and the woman at the laundromat, who was stabbed in the back, did not suffer life-threatening injuries, Dunn said.
The spokesman noted that many officers involved in the incident were equipped with body cameras and that the footage from them will be turned over to the Orange County District Attorney's office, which is investigating the officer-involved shooting.
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