Two El Dorado County sheriff’s deputies, a Pacific Gas and Electric contract worker and the suspected gunman were wounded Thursday after a utility crew reported being shot at outside a home in Camino, authorities said.
The violence unfolded in two stages and left major questions unanswered by nightfall. Investigators said the first shooting happened shortly after sunrise, when a PG&E crew called for help from Mountain View Drive. Hours later, after deputies and a SWAT team tried to reach a man inside the home, the scene turned into an officer-involved shooting that wounded both deputies and the suspect. The immediate stakes were practical and urgent: keeping residents away from the area, getting the injured to hospitals and beginning the separate but linked investigations into the shooting of the utility worker and the gunfire that followed.
Authorities said the first emergency call came at about 7:25 a.m. from a PG&E crew working near a residence on Mountain View Drive in Camino, a small El Dorado County community along the Highway 50 corridor east of Sacramento. The crew reported that someone at or near the home had shot at them. One worker was hit and taken to a hospital. Officials later said the worker’s injuries were not life-threatening. PG&E told local television station CBS Sacramento that the crew had been in the area to replace a pole, a detail that made the attack seem even more routine and random because the workers were there to do regular utility work, not respond to a dispute. Deputies from the El Dorado County Sheriff’s Office went to the scene right away, and the sheriff’s office later said a SWAT team joined them as the response grew. By then, what began as an attack on a work crew had become a barricade situation centered on a home in the 700 block of Mountain View Drive.
Officers spent roughly three hours trying to make contact with the suspect, according to sheriff’s spokesperson Jesse Dacanay, who said patrol deputies and SWAT members were trying to de-escalate the situation. Authorities said the suspect was inside a house on Mountain View Drive during that stretch. Residents nearby described a long, uneasy pause before the second burst of violence. Allen Harrison, who lives nearby, told KCRA that he did not realize how serious the situation was until he heard law enforcement using a loudspeaker. Another neighbor, Melody Meyer, told the station she later heard a rapid round of gunfire and officers ordering a man to come out with his hands up and empty. The sheriff’s office said an officer-involved shooting happened at about 11:25 a.m. During that encounter, two deputies and the suspect were shot. Medics took all three to hospitals. Officials said the deputies were in stable condition, while the suspect was flown by helicopter to a regional hospital and his condition was not immediately released.
By Thursday evening, officials were still withholding many of the details that usually shape public understanding of a case like this. The sheriff’s office had not publicly identified the suspect, the injured deputies or the wounded worker. Authorities also had not said what started the confrontation with the PG&E crew, whether the suspect fired from inside or outside the home, what weapons were used or how the officer-involved shooting unfolded in the final minutes before shots were fired. The sheriff’s office did say there were no outstanding suspects and no known threat to public safety. That helped narrow the public risk, but it did little to answer the central questions that remained at the heart of the case. By late Thursday, residents knew where the shooting happened and who had been hurt, but not why the gunfire started or what deputies faced during the standoff before they opened fire or came under fire themselves.
The response drew in more than the sheriff’s office alone. Officials said the case was being investigated under the El Dorado County Critical Incident Protocol, a formal review process used when officers are involved in a shooting or other major use-of-force event. The sheriff’s office said investigators from the El Dorado County District Attorney’s Office, Placerville Police, South Lake Tahoe Police and the sheriff’s office itself were taking part. That setup matters because the incident now has at least two connected parts that require careful review: the reported shooting of the utility worker before deputies arrived, and the officer-involved shooting that left two deputies and the suspect wounded. The 700 block of Mountain View Drive remained closed Thursday while investigators worked the scene. Authorities said law enforcement officers would stay in the area as evidence was collected, witnesses were interviewed and the timeline was reconstructed.
The shooting also brought quick reaction from PG&E and from the union that represents many utility workers in Northern California. PG&E said the injured person was a contract co-worker and said the company was aware of the incident. IBEW Local 1245, which identified the wounded worker as a union member, said it was relieved that he was expected to recover. Bob Dean, the union’s business manager, said utility crews already work in dangerous conditions around high-voltage equipment, bad weather and emergency outages, and should not also face violence from the people they are there to help. That response added a wider labor and public-safety angle to the story. Utility workers often move through neighborhoods without much public notice, handling outages, repairs and line work that keeps service running. Thursday’s attack turned that familiar work into the starting point of a daylong crime scene and highlighted a risk that utility companies and unions say has become more visible in recent years.
Camino is not a large town, and the scale of the law enforcement response stood out in a place better known for orchards, foothill homes and traffic moving through the Sierra corridor than for an hourslong armed standoff. Video from local stations showed a heavy police presence in a residential area not far from Highway 50, with roadblocks in place and investigators moving through the neighborhood. For residents, the long gap between the first report of a worker being shot and the later exchange involving deputies appears to have been one of the hardest parts of the day to process. There was no fast, clean ending. Instead, the morning moved from a report of gunfire, to a containment operation, to negotiations or attempted contact, and then to a second round of violence that left even more people wounded. That slow escalation helps explain why the sheriff’s office emphasized both the size of the response and the fact that the scene remained active well after the shooting itself had ended.
What happens next is likely to unfold more slowly than the day’s violence did. Investigators must now determine the facts of the first shooting against the PG&E crew and the later officer-involved shooting, tasks that often require separate witness interviews, forensic evidence reviews and close study of body camera footage, radio traffic and any statements from the wounded suspect once he is able to be interviewed. Officials had not announced any arrest, any charge or any possible motive by Thursday night. They also had not said whether the suspect lived at the home, whether the utility crew had prior contact with anyone there or whether deputies were fired upon before returning fire. Because the suspect survived, at least as of the last public update, the case could eventually move into a criminal prosecution as well as an internal and outside review of the officer-involved shooting. For now, though, authorities are still in the evidence-gathering stage, and the public record remains thin on the facts that would explain intent, sequence and responsibility.
The human toll was clearer than the legal one. A utility worker who went out to help maintain service ended up in the hospital. Two deputies who answered the call were wounded during the standoff that followed. A suspect was airlifted after the exchange of gunfire. And a quiet road in Camino became a closed crime scene watched by neighbors who, hours earlier, had little reason to expect a major armed response outside their homes. Even without a motive or a full police narrative, the day left behind a simple outline of disruption and danger: routine utility work, a report of gunfire, a long standoff and four people hurt before noon.
As of Thursday night, the sheriff’s office said there were no outstanding suspects and no known continuing threat to the public, while investigators from several agencies continued processing the scene on Mountain View Drive. The next major milestone is expected to be a fuller statement from authorities identifying the suspect and explaining what led to both shootings.