Photo: Sonoma County Sheriff’s Office

Graphic video footage released Friday showed that a disabled carjacking victim killed by Sonoma County law enforcement officers was pulled through a car window by a deputy who punched him, choked him and slammed his face against the vehicle as a second deputy shocked him multiple times with a Taser.

Sheriff Mark Essick released the body-worn-camera footage while announcing that he is seeking to fire Deputy Charles Blount, who beat and choked David Glen Ward, the 52-year-old Petaluma man who died the morning of Nov. 27.

Essick called the deputy’s conduct “extremely troubling” in a publicly released video that included footage of the fatal encounter.

Blount has 10 days to appeal the notice of termination, Essick said. In the footage, officers state that Ward resisted being pulled through the window and bit them.

Blount’s attorney, Harry Stern, said he was “extremely disappointed” in the sheriff’s decision, which he said was driven by “panic, political expediency and hindsight.”

“Charlie Blount has served the people of Sonoma County for over 20 years and honorably served in the military for 20 years before that,” he said. “His actions during this arrest were entirely reasonable.”

Stern said Ward “caused his own death by inexplicably taking a number of bizarre actions that confirmed in the deputies’ minds that he was an armed carjacker, rather than the victim of that crime.”

The encounter happened after Blount, another sheriff’s deputy and two Sebastopol police officers mistook Ward for a car-theft suspect after he had reported his green Honda Civic taken in a carjacking three days earlier. Ward had been pistol-whipped in the carjacking and had what appeared to be a black eye.

He had retrieved the vehicle, but didn’t alert police, officials said. When officers spotted the vehicle and tried to stop him, Ward fled, leading to an early morning chase that started near Bloomfield and Murray roads south of Sebastopol and ended five minutes later when deputies spun the vehicle out, disabling it.

Body-camera footage showed an officer with a gun drawn, shouting at Ward to keep his hands up as officers moved toward the vehicle.

“Show me your f— hands! Show me your hands!” Deputy Jason Little shouted, pointing a gun at Ward. “Turn off the f— car!”

Ward appeared to be unable open the door with one hand and rolled down his window.

“I can’t believe this, I’m the injured party in this,” Ward said. He later asked, “Why you f— harassing me all the time?”

WARNING: THE VIDEO BELOW CONTAINS VIOLENT FOOTAGE AND PROFANE LANGUAGE.

Blount told Ward, “Give me your hands,” and a second later began tugging him from the car window.

“All right, I’m getting out, I’m getting out,” Ward said, a moment before yelling, “My legs, my legs.”

Blount shouted that Ward bit him, and about 15 seconds later punched the back of his head. He pressed Ward’s head against the frame of the car door, and then smashed Ward’s face against it twice. Ward moaned before Blount knocked his face against the frame one more time as another deputy deployed a Taser.

About six seconds after Ward was shocked, Blount placed him in a choke hold for more than 30 seconds. At that point, other officers opened the passenger door and dragged Ward out, putting him on the ground face-down and handcuffing him. Little and Blount both said Ward had bitten them during the encounter.

As Ward lay unresponsive on the ground, another officer realized he was the vehicle’s owner.

“This is, this is the owner of the car,” the officer said. “This is David Ward. He’s the, he’s the victim.”

“Oh well,” Blount said.

Ward stopped breathing at the scene and later died at a hospital, authorities said. The Marin County coroner’s office has not determined a cause of death.

The Santa Rosa Police Department is investigating the killing, and county prosecutors will ultimately decide whether to file any criminal charges.

Officers on Dec. 7 arrested 32-year-old Driden Estrada in connection with the attack and carjacking of Ward that led him to report the Honda stolen.

Essick called Blount’s conduct “unacceptable” and served him a notice of termination Thursday after two investigators he commissioned to probe the deputy’s actions submitted findings.

The investigation, he said, showed Blount demonstrated willful disregard for policy and carelessness or violation of safety rules. He told The Chronicle he can’t rule out any other officers being disciplined or fired.

“I think it is fair to say for anybody who watches the video that it shocks the conscience,” Essick said. “When this kind of conduct emerges, it is my job as a leader to call it out.”

Ward had serious health problems, and had difficulty walking, talking and breathing after being injured in a car crash two decades ago, his family said. He was dependent on a caretaker.

Before releasing the footage, officials said one of the deputies had used a carotid restraint during the incident, raising questions about the tactic that incapacitates a person by cutting off blood to their brain and has come under scrutiny due to its potential to kill.

Agencies around the country, including the San Francisco Police Department, have banned the move. Sonoma County sheriff deputies are not banned from using the restraint.

The video released Friday showed “a multitude of problematic behavior,” one use-of-force expert said.

“You have an individual not following the law, and then you have an officer apparently not following policy,” said Keith Taylor, a former New York City police sergeant and criminal justice professor at John Jay College in Manhattan. “There are so many different factors that could play a role in how this ended up the way that it did. The carotid restraint would be part of that, but not the sole thing.”

Ward’s death was the latest of several recently released videos of controversial Northern California police killings.

This month, police in Ceres (Stanislaus County) released video of Officer Ross Bays fatally shooting 15-year-old Carmen Spencer Mendez as the boy fled police through an orchard in August 2018. The boy was armed with a handgun but was running away when Bays fired more than a dozen shots without saying a word.

Days later, authorities in Contra Costa County released videos of Officer Andrew Hall fatally shooting 33-year-old Newark resident Laudemer Arboleda in November 2018 as he attempted to flee Danville police in his car.

The videos showed Hall running toward Arboleda’s car before opening fire and killing him. Arboleda was unarmed and not suspected of any crime before police began chasing him following reports of a suspicious person in a residential neighborhood.

Both officers were apparently cleared in the shootings.

Sonoma County has had controversial police killings in the past, most notably the 2013 death of Andy Lopez. In that case, the 13-year-old was shot dead by a sheriff’s deputy who mistook his toy AK-47 for a real rifle, prompting outrage in the community.

The county paid $3 million to Andy’s family without admitting wrongdoing. The deputy who shot the boy, Erick Gelhaus, was cleared criminally after the district attorney concluded he acted in what he believed was self-defense.

Alejandro Serrano and Evan Sernoffsky are San Francisco Chronicle staff writers. Email: alejandro.serrano@sfchronicle.com, esernoffsky@sfchronicle.com Twitter: @serrano_alej, @evansernoffsky