The California Department of Justice and local agencies are investigating after Manteca police officers shot and killed a 69-year-old man in a confrontation at an In-N-Out, police said this week.

The incident started around 5 p.m. Wednesday, when the Manteca Police Department received a call about a disturbance in the drive-through line at In-N-Out near East Yosemite Avenue and Highway 99 in Manteca, officials said.

When police responded, officials said a man driving a white van rammed into a police vehicle “upon contact” with officers.

Officers spent about 20 minutes trying to “de-escalate the situation” before “the vehicle again accelerated (and) rammed at least two police vehicles,” officials said. 

It’s unclear how many officers total were at the scene, and what steps they took to try to diffuse the encounter.

But video footage published by multiple outlets, and matching officials’ descriptions of the incident, shows a white minivan stopped near one of the burger joint’s entrances reverse briefly before driving into the nose of a police vehicle at moderate speed. An In-N-Out worker is also seen standing near the scene.

Seconds later, another police vehicle is visible pulling up beside the first. The van driver — visible through a front window, and wearing a red shirt — reverses and then hits the second police vehicle at low speed.

Then officers opened fire.

The driver, now identified as Charles Craig McGonegal II of Lathrop, was struck and died in the hospital, officials said. No one else was in the vehicle with McGonegal, police say.

The Manteca Police Department sent no immediate response regarding whether officers could have diffused the situation using non-lethal force. In total, McGonegal drove into three patrol cars during the encounter, officials said. 

More than two dozen gunshots were fired, KCRA reported.

“If somebody was attacking you, how many bullets would you fire?” Manteca Police spokesman Sgt. Steve Beermann said to KCRA earlier this week.

It’s unclear what the nature of the reported disturbance was that led to police responding to the In-N-Out.

The California Department of Justice and the San Joaquin County District Attorney’s Office are now investigating if the Manteca officers’ killing of McGonegal was justified. 

A California law passed in 2019 deemed killings by police “justifiable” when “the officer reasonably believes, based on the totality of the circumstances, that deadly force is necessary to defend against an imminent threat of death or serious bodily injury to the officer or to another person.”

Under the law, killings by police are also deemed “justifiable” in order to “apprehend a fleeing person for a felony that threatened or resulted in death or serious bodily injury, if the officer reasonably believes that the person will cause death or serious bodily injury to another unless the person is immediately apprehended.”

The DA’s Office will decide whether to charge the officers, and must provide legal reasoning for its decision, per the county’s police shooting protocol.

“The purpose of a review (…) is to determine whether or not, based on the evidence, an officer’s use of force was necessary and objectively reasonable given the circumstances at the time of the incident,” the DA’s Office website states.

The DA’s Office can’t say how long the investigation will take, spokesperson Erin Haight told Stocktonia Friday.

“There isn’t really a standard timeline for Officer-Involved Shooting investigations, as each case is different and can involve a number of variables,” she said.