For Orange County Sheriff’s deputies who stopped shooter at Cook’s Corner, memories are vivid

Nearly a year ago, on Aug. 23, 2023, three men had the kind of hectic workday – horrible, heroic, fatal – you probably never have at your job.

That was the night, a Wednesday, when Orange County Sheriff’s deputies Jesse Carrasco, Brandon Espinosa and Juan Contreras were the first to respond to a call of shots fired at Cook’s Corner, the family-friendly biker bar and restaurant in Trabuco Canyon. Though they say now they weren’t necessarily expecting a mass shooting – “I thought it was probably fireworks or something,” said Espinosa, 31. “Actual shots are unusual” – that’s exactly what they rolled into.

Simply put, they did their jobs. They identified the shooter, they exchanged gunfire with him, and then, in the law-enforcement lexicon they all used, they “ended the threat.”

It was, by all accounts, textbook. Though the Orange County District Attorney’s office isn’t done with its formal investigation – something required after all police shootings – there is, so far, zero controversy about what the deputies did at Cook’s Corner.

The why was never in question.

Minutes before they arrived, a retired Ventura Police Sergeant, John Snowling, 59, was shooting people inside and outside the restaurant, killing three and wounding six, including his estranged wife. By the time the deputies arrived in separate patrol cars, Snowling was in the restaurant’s upper parking lot, firing at the deputies and seemingly anyone in sight.

Shooting Snowling – and there’s no official word on who specifically did that – almost certainly saved lives.

It changed lives, too.

Nothing about shooting another human, or being shot at by one, is simple or textbook. Though none of the three deputies has struggled with what happened – and they all seem willing to say if they had – their memories are clear and vivid and fresh.

And memories can be powerful things.

Family

Actual police work isn’t television. Officers can go years or decades or entire careers without experiencing anything like violence that took place at Cook’s Corner. Before that night only one of the three deputies (Carrasco, 33) had ever fired a weapon as part of his job. And none had ever been shot at.

“It was a ‘whiiiieeew’ kinda sound,” said Contreras, 33, ducking and wincing a little as he moved a hand over his right ear to describe listening to the bullets that didn’t quite hit him.

All three, speaking in the parking lot where the shooting took place – near the bullet-scarred oak tree where Snowling hid and died – described their first thoughts that night as being about “tactics.”

Depending on how you define mass shootings, several dozen to several hundred mass shootings happen each year in the United States, and every modern police agency now trains – a lot – on how to respond to those events. The Orange County Sheriff’s Department is no different, so Carrasco, Espinosa and Contreras had a lot of tactical information swirling in their heads even before they jumped out of their patrol cars.

Identify the threat. Prevent the threat from harming anybody. End the threat.

They also thought about any victims they might need to help. And about the other deputies who were arriving at the scene. And they thought about each other, about how they were work partners and friends, people with similar training and capabilities.

A year later, they can recall thinking other things, too.

The human brain processes trauma differently than it processes routine events. Because of that, memories from things like car crashes and mass shootings sometimes can be vivid and not necessarily on point.

“Bird sounds,” Espinosa said, listing some of the things he can recall during the minutes of the gunfight.

“You can kind of remember everything.”

When it was over – after the shooting stopped and they’d done what they could to help with nearby victims – the three deputies were whisked away to a nearby Sheriff’s station. They spent the next several hours talking with their bosses and a lawyer and a therapist.

By about 1 a.m., their night was over.

And just starting.

“It’s not like, ‘Hey, I think I’ll go to sleep now,’” Carrasco said.

“We needed to talk; to be with each other,” Contreras added.

So they were. They gathered in Contreras’ living room, with Contreras’ wife and Carrasco’s fiance and Espinosa’s girlfriend. They talked. They listened. They breathed.

They called family to assure them they were OK.

“You think about your family, a lot,” Carrasco said. “That’s really what you think about.”

As needed

The first few days after the shooting were about de-stressing. The deputies were sent home, with pay, until they felt OK to come back. There was no timetable, and they didn’t describe any formal rules connected to the process.

“They just told us to take as much time as we needed,” Espinosa said.

That was about a week, give or take, for all three. And when they got back to work they were allowed back into the field, patrolling north Mission Viejo.

Their first calls, upon returning, weren’t particularly dangerous.

“I think it was a noise complaint,” said Contreras.

“But I don’t remember for sure.”

All three said they’re careful at work, but they were careful before the shooting, too. They also said they’re not afraid of whatever they might feel related to the incident – it can take years to fully process violence like what happened at Cook’s Corner.

“I think about it probably every other day,” Carrasco said. “It definitely hasn’t gone away.”

It’s not likely to anytime soon, either.

Their story has been chronicled on local and national television and written up in local media. Body camera video of the shooting – taken by a camera on Carrasco’s bulletproof vest – has been popular since it was made public last October.

Also, earlier this year, all three deputies were recognized by the Sheriff’s Department for their heroism during the events at Cook’s Corner.

Their lives are going forward, too. Espinosa recently became engaged, so he and Carrasco will both have weddings at some point in the near future.

One of the guests at Carrasco’s wedding will be someone he met as he was being shot at in the parking lot at Cook’s Corner.

Nelson Rosales, who has worked at a jail in South Gate, was about to park his motorcycle at the restaurant when a woman outside warned him there was a shooting underway. He used a telephone pole for cover and watched as Snowling made his way out of the restaurant and toward the upper parking lot and his truck.

When the patrol cars arrived, Rosales ran away from his safe spot to tell the deputies what he saw. As bullets flew around them both, Rosales told Carrasco what the shooter looked like and where he was.

Carrasco said the information saved his life.

The next time Carrasco met Rosales was in October, when the Sheriff’s Department held a ceremony to honor Rosales for his courage.

“He’s a really, really great guy,” Carrasco said, of Rosales. “We ride motorcycles together.”

“So, I made a friend,” he added.

“I guess that’s something to come out of this.”