2009 shootings of Oakland police officers

On March 21, 2009, Lovelle Mixon, a convicted felon wanted on a no-bail warrant for a parole violation, fatally shot four Oakland, California police officers. Mixon initially shot and killed two Oakland police officers during a traffic stop. After escaping on foot to the nearby apartment of his sister, Mixon then killed two police SWAT team officers attempting to apprehend him. Mixon was then killed as officers returned fire.

The killings made it one of the bloodiest days for law enforcement in California history. It was the single deadliest attack on California police officers since the Newhall massacre in 1970, when four California Highway Patrol officers were shot and killed by two men in Santa Clarita, California. It was also the deadliest attack on U.S. law enforcement since the September 11 attacks, until it was equaled by the killings of four police officers in Lakewood, Washington, in November 2009; and surpassed by a mass shooting in Dallas, Texas, in July 2016 that killed five police officers.

At approximately 5:40 a.m., seven hours before the first part of Mixon's assault on the officers, two young women in their 20s were setting up a food court at High Street and International Boulevard. Mixon pulled a handgun (believed to be the one he used hours later in the shootings), marched them four blocks at gunpoint, raped them, and then fled the scene.

At 1:08 p.m. PDT, approximately seven hours after the rapes, Mixon's burgundy 1995 Buick sedan was pulled over by two motorcycle officers, Officer John Hege and Sergeant Mark Dunakin, for a traffic violation, in the 7400 block of MacArthur Boulevard in East Oakland, one block away from Eastmont Town Center and an Oakland Police Department substation. After collecting Mixon's driver's license, Sergeant Dunakin became suspicious that the license was fake and signaled to his partner, Officer Hege, to arrest Mixon. Mixon accessed a semiautomatic pistol, leaned out of the vehicle's side window, and opened fire without warning, methodically shooting both officers twice. After the officers collapsed to the ground, he got out of the vehicle, approached them, and fired execution-style directly into their backs. He then briefly remained standing over the bodies before fleeing on foot. Those who heard the gunshots reported Mixon as having fired six shots. Neither officer was able to return fire. Mixon was last seen fleeing westward into the surrounding neighborhood on 74th Avenue southbound.