Mayor Pete Buttigieg will no longer travel to California for a series of top dollar fundraisers on Tuesday and Wednesday, a spokesman for the campaign tells CNN, and instead will stay in South Bend, Indiana, to handle the fallout from an officer-involved shooting that happened early on Sunday morning.
Buttigieg already canceled multiple events and meetings in New York that were scheduled for Monday and called a late-night press conference in South Bend to address the shooting, pledging to work to get to the bottom of what happened.
“We have canceled upcoming campaign events so that Mayor Pete can be with the South Bend community after the officer-involved shooting,” the spokesman said.
Buttigieg was scheduled to headline a string of events in Los Angeles on Tuesday and Wednesday, including an event hosted by Nicole Avant, a Hollywood bundler who helped raise roughly $800,000 for then-Sen. Barack Obama in 2008, on Tuesday and a top-dollar fundraiser at the home of TV producer Ryan Murphy and his husband, David Miller, on Wednesday.
The events were part of an end of June money sprint aimed at posting the largest fundraising number possible by the end of the Federal Election Commission’s second fundraising quarter at the end of the month.
These cancellations won’t necessarily impact that count: Buttigieg’s events have been sold out for months, meaning the money raised has already been counted by the South Bend mayor’s campaign and will be reflected in the second quarter report.
According to the County Metro Homicide Unit, the Indiana group that is currently investigating the officer involved shooting, police received a call shortly before 3:30 a.m. on Sunday regarding an individual allegedly going through cars.
“The South Bend Police Department … engaged a subject who was partially in a vehicle in the Central High School Apartments parking lot,” a statement from the homicide unit said. “The subject exited the vehicle and approached the officer with a knife raised. The officer reportedly discharged his service weapon, striking the subject.”
The subject – who was later identified by the office as Eric Jack Logan of South Bend – was transported to the hospital in critical condition but was later pronounced deceased.
Buttigieg announced on Sunday night that the officer was put on administrative leave while the incident is being investigated.
Buttigieg traveled back to South Bend on Sunday afternoon and canceled a Monday fundraiser in New York and an appearance at an LGBTQ gala put on by the Democratic National Committee.
Democratic presidential hopeful Julián Castro, who previously served as the mayor of San Antonio, took to Twitter to support Buttigieg’s decision to stay in South Bend after the shooting.
“As a former mayor, I know the impact that these shootings have on a community & I commend @PeteButtigieg for his decision to return to South Bend. We must do more to prevent these incidents, and to mend the relationship between police and the communities they serve,” Castro wrote.
The mayor also acknowledged on Sunday evening that lessons he learned from past officer involved shootings guided him to get in front of cameras as soon as possible to reassure the city.
“One of the reasons we’re communicating upfront right now is because of lessons learned from members of the community,” Buttigieg said when he was asked about receiving criticism early in his tenure for his handling of other officer involved shootings. “We’ve had prior cases of use of force incidents and officer involved shootings where I hesitated, frankly, to get in front of cameras because we didn’t know very much, and it was out of our hands.”
The County Metro Homicide Office held a news conference Monday about the officer-involved shooting. Buttigieg was not present at the news conference.
Kenneth Cotter, the lead prosecutor, identified the officer who shot the victim as Sergeant Ryan O’Neill, and said there is no body camera footage of the shooting. O’Neill did not activate his body cam and it was not automatically triggered, which would have happened if he turned on his squad car’s lights or began driving at a high rate of speed.
The Buttigieg spokesman also said that Buttigieg’s trip to California was going to include a policy rollout. That rollout has also been scrapped, the spokesman said, but will be announced in the future.
The next fundraiser on Buttigieg’s schedule: The mayor is scheduled to travel to Boston on June 20 for an event hosted by prolific political donor Jack Connors, where organizers hope to raise as much as $1 million, according to donors invited to the event.
CNN’s Kate Sullivan contributed to this report.