The Chino Hills kidnapping that unfolded late Wednesday night ended in a way no responding deputy could have predicted, with a fleeing driver stepping out of his stopped vehicle, opening the trunk and firing into it before being shot dead himself.

Only afterward did authorities discover that a man had been inside.

Both men died. The victim in the trunk was identified Friday by the San Bernardino County Sheriff’s Department as 60-year-old Shukur Aikebaer. The driver was Zhengfeng Bo, 67, of Irvine, who according to investigators had a prior working relationship with Aikebaer.

A third man, 66-year-old Jianquan Bo, was riding in the passenger seat. He surrendered to deputies during the stop and is now held on murder and kidnapping charges. The department has not explained how the two Bos are related, saying only that they shared an Irvine residence which investigators have since searched.

How the Night Began

The first call came in around 10:15 p.m. from a home on Monteverde Drive. Someone reported gunshots and a person screaming.

Neighbours later described an unusual detail preceding the abduction. Power had failed at the Aikebaer residence but nowhere else on the street. The sheriff’s department says it is investigating what caused that outage.

According to family friend Adam Nijiati, a 40-year-old software engineer, Aikebaer went outside to look into the electrical problem. It was at that point that his 13-year-old daughter heard the shots and the scream.

A Family Left Without Answers

Aikebaer lived in the two-storey house with his wife and three daughters. He belonged to a small, closely connected Uyghur community, and Nijiati was among those gathered at the home on Thursday as relatives tried to make sense of what had happened.

Nijiati described him as modest and among the kindest people anyone could meet. He also raised the question that has occupied everyone since: Aikebaer was not a wealthy man, which makes the motive for taking him difficult to understand.

He had immigrated from China somewhere between fifteen and twenty years ago and worked across several ventures to support his family, including flipping houses and running a fast-food restaurant in San Diego.

Nijiati called the whole episode unbelievable.

The Pursuit

Deputies responding to the 911 call spotted a speeding vehicle and attempted a traffic stop. The driver did not comply immediately, leading them on a brief chase through residential streets before halting in front of homes on Wandering Ridge Drive, roughly a mile from where the abduction occurred.

The passenger got out and gave himself up without incident.

The driver did something else entirely. He exited the vehicle, walked to the rear, opened the trunk and fired a single shot into it. Deputies shot him.

The department stated that officers did not know anyone was in the trunk until after the driver had been killed.

What Neighbours Saw and Heard

Debbie Maki, 64, lives on the street where the pursuit ended. She said she and her husband were pulled outside by the sound of sirens and had gone onto their porch when the gunfire started. They went back indoors.

Home surveillance video obtained by KTLA appears to capture the driver walking to the back of the sedan, opening the trunk with his back toward the deputies and leaning slightly into the vehicle. The critical moment is obscured in the footage, but smoke from the deputies’ weapons is visible seconds later.

Audio recorded by a camera at Maki’s home captured deputies issuing commands, including over a loudspeaker, before multiple shots were fired. Her camera was not angled to record the shootings themselves.

A Community Unaccustomed to This

Chino Hills sits about 35 miles east of downtown Los Angeles, a suburb of large homes, two-storey stucco houses and shopping centres arranged across green rolling hills at the eastern boundary of Los Angeles County.

Maki described the experience as nerve-racking, which understates what residents witnessed on an ordinary Wednesday evening.

The city does not operate its own police force. It contracts services from the county sheriff’s department, which maintains a station locally.

The Questions That Remain

Several significant matters are unresolved. Investigators have not disclosed what the working relationship between Aikebaer and Zhengfeng Bo involved, nor whether any financial dispute preceded the abduction.

The power outage isolated to a single house suggests deliberate preparation rather than an opportunistic crime, and what that indicates about planning is likely to feature heavily in the investigation.

Also unclear is what the driver believed he was accomplishing. Shooting into a trunk in full view of armed deputies, during a stop he had already been forced into, is not the behaviour of someone attempting to escape.

For a family in Chino Hills, none of those answers will change the outcome. A man who went outside to check on his electricity did not come back.