Authorities Tuesday publicly identified the auto-theft suspect who was wounded last week when a San Diego Police Department officer opened fire on him when he appeared to reach for what looked like a pistol following a road chase that ended in a crash near Sweetwater Lane County Park. Edwaun Walt er Thames, 39, survived the gunshots and has been released from medical care and booked on suspicion of several felony charges, according to the San Diego County Sheriff’s Office, which investigates shootings involving personnel with the SDPD under terms of a regional agreement designed to prevent actual or perceived conflicts of interest. The pursuit from the Lincoln Park district of San Diego to the La Presa community near Spring Valley began shortly after 12:45 p.m. Thursday, when patrol personnel tried to pull over the suspect in the vicinity of Euclid and Imperial avenues, sheriff’s Lt. Juan Marquez said. Thames allegedly refused to yield and fled to the east, at one point running over a tire-flattening spike strip police laid in his path and eventually leading officers to a neighborhood in an unincorporated area north of Sweetwater Reservoir and just east of state Route 125. There, the fleeing suspect lost control of the stolen car, sending it crashing off the roadway at Gillespie Drive and Jamacha Road at about 1:30 p.m., SDPD Officer Colin Steinbroner said. The vehicle struck a light pole, which then fell onto an SDPD cruiser, the spokesman said. At that point, officers had the suspect get out of the car and turn his back to them with his hands in the air, and then ordered him to lie down face first in the street. Video footage captured by an officer’s uniform-worn camera shows the suspect getting onto his knees. A fellow officer can be heard asking, “Is that a real gun?,” apparently referring to an object on the roadway near the suspect. Moments later, the suspect leaned toward the object with his right hand extended toward it, and the officer whose body camera was recording the video, SDPD Officer Henry Ingram Jr., fired two rounds at him, sending the suspect collapsing onto the asphalt. Along with the video footage, police released a still image of what they identified as the object that the suspect seemed to be reaching for — described with seeming accuracy in an accompanying news release as “an item that appeared to be a firearm.” GRAPHIC CONTENT WARNING: The video below was edited and released by San Diego police and shows the incident. Viewer discretion is advised. An officer was treated at the scene of the shooting for cuts suffered when the toppling utility standard broke a window on the patrol vehicle it landed on, Steinbroner said. Thames has been charged with auto theft, possessing a stolen vehicle and felony evasion of police. He is being held at San Diego Central Jail on $50,000 bail pending trial. Ingram has been with the San Diego Police Department for about two years, Marquez said. This story uses functionality that may not work in our app. Click here to open the story in your web browser. ...read more read less