Corona Police Kill Assailant in Cinema

A knife-wielding man cornered in a Corona movie theater was shot and killed by police during the screening of an action thriller Wednesday after leading them on a foot chase through stalled traffic.

Officials did not release the man’s name, and details of the incident were sketchy.

“I thought it was part of the movie,” said William Griffin, 19, one of dozens of people evacuated from the Edwards Corona 15 theater in the 300 block of Rincon Street during a late-afternoon showing of “XXX: State of the Union.”

Said his friend Cameron Payne, 20: “We thought someone was robbing the theater.”

Police said the incident began about 4:15 p.m. with a call from a nearby Kmart reporting that a man had cut his wrist with a butcher knife behind the store.

Responding officers fired a Taser stun gun and beanbags at him, said Officer Jesse Jurado, a spokesman for the Corona Police Department.

But the man took off across nearby Main Street and tried to carjack several vehicles by opening their doors while they were stopped at a signal.

He was carrying a knife “the size of a ruler,” said Billy Gipson, 39, who had been waiting for the light to change.

After watching the man run across the cinema’s parking lot and into the theater, Gipson said, he saw an officer enter the building with his gun drawn, followed by streams of people coming out. “A lady came running out and said she heard a ‘pop-pop-pop,’ ” Gipson said. “She said, ‘Oh my God, they shot him.’ ”

According to Jurado, the man was shot because “he was a threat to the officers.” The incident remained under investigation, he said.