Bizarre Death During Gay Cruise

I've been getting emails about this bizarre story all morning from people who were there.

San Diego Harbor Police fatally shot a man late Saturday after he began fighting with officers who had just rescued him from the water. Harbor Police responded to a call from a boat chartered for a gay pride cruise about a man overboard about 11:50 p.m., said Harbor Police Sgt. David Fouser. A police boat found the man in the water about 500 feet south of the U.S. Coast Guard Air Station on Harbor Drive across from Lindbergh Field.

The man was identified by the Medical Examiner's Office as 37-year-old Steven Paul Hirschfield. He boarded the boat and began fighting with two officers, Harbor Police said. He knocked one officer to the deck, took the officer's Taser stun gun and began beating him in the face with it. Hirschfield then tried to get the injured officer's gun. As he struggled to “get control” of the gun, the second officer shot the man once in the chest, Harbor Police said.

The police boat went to a nearby dock at the Embarcadero and met paramedics. Hirschfield was pronounced dead by paramedics. The injured officer was transported to a hospital with face and leg injuries. He was released Sunday morning, according to Fouser. San Diego police officers are investigating the shooting with the assistance of Harbor Police and the San Diego County District Attorney's Office. An autopsy for Hirschfield has been scheduled for Monday.

Local TV coverage is here. The dead man was a go-go boy hired to dance at the party. It's unclear whether he jumped overboard or fell accidentally, but the fact that he fought with the people trying to rescue him indicates that drugs were probably involved.

UPDATE: Here's a few screen grabs from a 2001 straight porn movie that the deceased appeared in.