San José Police Say Father Killed His Son Before Being Shot by Officers

Updated 4:40 p.m. Monday

San José police say a man stabbed his own child to death in a North San José park on Sunday afternoon, then called 911 to report the killing before officers fatally shot him.

Police Chief Paul Joseph said during a Monday afternoon press conference that the man appears to have planned the act in an attempt to provoke officers to shoot him, which Joseph called “cowardly.”

Around 3:23 p.m. Sunday, Joseph said a man called 911 to report that someone had stabbed his 9-year-old son at Cataldi Park.

“The caller was hysterical, stating the assailant was still on scene and gave a description of the suspect that officers later discovered exactly described the caller himself,” Joseph said.

When officers arrived, they saw Mateusz Dzierbun, 48, of Fremont, hunched over a bloody child on the ground, armed with a large knife, Joseph said.

Joseph said officers “pleaded with the suspect to drop the knife,” but Dzierbun didn’t cooperate “and instead made several statements indicating he intended to be shot by the police.”

Dzierbun then stood up with the knife raised and charged at officers, who fired on him. Joseph said a sergeant with 19 years of experience and an officer with about four and a half years both fired their weapons.

Other officers were present with “less lethal” weapons, but Joseph said, “They weren’t able to try those options before [Dzierbun] forced the issue.” Officers arrived at the park around 3:31 p.m., and the shooting occurred about three minutes later, he said.

When officers reached the child, Joseph said the boy was already “clearly deceased,” and “suffered from injuries so severe that it’s unimaginable they could have been inflicted by his own father.”

Both officers are crisis intervention-trained and were wearing body cameras.

“The officers who responded that afternoon were running toward what they believed was a child desperately in need of help. They came intending to save a life, not to take one,” Joseph said.

“They had no way of knowing that this horrific and unfathomable act of violence had already led to the loss of an innocent child’s life before they even arrived. Now these officers have to carry a weight that was never theirs to bear, but one that was placed squarely on their shoulders by a man whose final act was as selfish as it was senseless,” he added.

Joseph said Dzierbun doesn’t seem to have any documented mental health issues or criminal history in Alameda or Santa Clara counties.

However, he noted that Dzierbun “moved around the country quite a bit and so homicide detectives are trying to work to retrace his steps.”

The killing marks the second fatal police shooting in San José in a week. On July 6, officers fatally shot a man in Almaden who, according to officials, was experiencing a mental health crisis and who shot at officers.

The department’s homicide unit is investigating Sunday’s shooting. Like all San José police shootings, it is also being investigated by the Santa Clara County District Attorney’s Office, and the case will be monitored administratively by the department’s internal affairs unit, the city attorney’s office and the office of the independent police auditor.

Joseph said the investigation is still in its early stages.

“What we know now may change as the investigation progresses,” he said. “There are some questions we may never know the answers to.”