Cops fatally shoot Joliet Marine

• Reprints

Updated: March 18, 2012 8:14AM

Police last week shot and killed a Joliet native and U.S. Marine stationed in California, after they say the man began acting irrationally.

Sgt. Manuel Loggins Jr., 31, was fatally shot Feb. 7 by an Orange County sheriff’s deputy in San Clemente, Calif.

The Orange County district attorney’s office is investigating.

Loggins enlisted in the Marine Corps in October 1998 and worked as a transportation management specialist at Marine Corps Base Camp Pendleton, which shares a border with San Clemente.

He was married with three children. His wife is pregnant with their fourth child.

On Tuesday, the union representing the sheriff’s deputy who shot Loggins, the Association of Orange County Deputy Sheriffs, issued a news release detailing the incident.

“It is heartbreaking that Manuel Loggins created a situation that put his children in danger and ultimately cost him his life,” said Tom Dominguez, president of the association, in a written statement.

The union reports that, about 4:30 a.m. Feb. 7, Loggins drove a GMC Yukon through a locked gate at San Clemente High School with his daughters, ages 9 and 14, in the back seat.

That caught the eye of a deputy who was writing reports in a nearby parking lot, the news release said.

The deputy approached Loggins, who had stopped the vehicle and was walking into a nearby field, leaving his children in the vehicle.

According to the police, the deputy started to follow Loggins, but stopped when he heard the children screaming.

Then the deputy heard Loggins yelling irrational statements and called for backup.

The union said the children told deputies who arrived at the scene their father had been acting strangely. A few minutes later, Loggins quickly returned to the vehicle, ignoring orders from deputies to stop.

Loggins allegedly got into the driver seat, started the car and put it in gear, despite continued orders to stop.

It was then clear, the union said, that Loggins was going to drive away and endanger his children.

Loggins was shot by a deputy standing next to the driver-side window. He was pronounced dead at hospital in Mission Viejo later that morning.

“The Manuel Loggins described by his friends and loved ones in the media is not the Manuel Loggins encountered by our deputies the morning of Feb. 7, nor as described by the children to the deputies at the scene before he returned to the Yukon,” Dominguez wrote. “It is unfortunate that his actions put his own children into immediate danger and resulted in his death.”

Loggins was described as a “loved and respected Marine” by Col. Nicholas Marano, commanding officer at Camp Pendleton.

“We have received an unprecedented amount of e-mails and phone calls this past week from current and former Marines who knew and loved Sgt. Loggins,” Marano said in a written statement issued Wednesday. “A family has lost their father, husband, brother and son. An unborn child will never know her father.”

No one answered the door at Loggins’ family’s home Thursday afternoon in Joliet.