Gregory Fitzgerald was fatally shot by San Joaquin County sheriff’s deputies last month after he repeatedly warned that he had a gun and threatened to fire at officers, video from the scene shows.

It turns out, however, that he was not armed.

Deputies pleaded with the 41-year-old as he sat atop a Stockton home’s rooftop to lay down his weapon and surrender as they called out to him from the street below. Instead, Fitzgerald drew a black object from his pants and made a sudden move as if he were going to shoot, as seen in video released Wednesday by the Sheriff’s Office.

That’s when deputies, fearing for their lives and those of nearby residents, simultaneously opened fire.

Fitzgerald had no gun. Sheriff Patrick Withrow, in releasing drone and body-cam video detailing the fatal incident on social media, did not identify what the black object Fitzgerald had was.

The video follows the encounter from the time when deputies encountered a man in the parking lot of Eastside Park. They were investigating him and a female companion for illegal dumping. Deputies spotted a rifle, which the woman identified as a pellet gun, in their cluttered Chevrolet Tahoe SUV.

The man was evasive as deputies questioned him, refusing to give his name, the video shows. When deputies said they were going to detain him, he broke away and ran through the park.

The foot chase led to a home in Stockton’s Garden Acres neighborhood, where the man climbed atop a roof of one of the homes. Deputies engaged in a lengthy exchange with him from the street, urging him to lay down his weapon and surrender. A SWAT team set up on a nearby rooftop during the standoff.

“Over the course of nearly two hours, our team worked diligently to deescalate the situation through crisis negotiation,” sheriff’s spokesperson Heather Brent said on the video.

During that time, she added, deputies were able to identify Fitzgerald as the man on the roof. They learned he had pleaded guilty in 2015 to assault charges that involved setting a man on fire and had been sentenced to 15 years behind bars. He was out on parole, but he had an active arrest warrant issued out of Missouri. He had made it clear that he would not return to prison.

Fitzgerald died at a local hospital shortly after the shooting.

Withrow defended the deputies’ decision to use deadly force.

“As you saw in the video, the suspect stated multiple times he had a gun, which obviously is a deadly weapon. He said he was going to shoot our deputies and held and brandished an object as if it was a deadly weapon,” Withrow said in a closing statement on the video.

The incident is under investigation by the California Department of Justice, as required by state law when officers use deadly force to subdue people who are unarmed.