SOUTH SAN FRANCISCO — A police officer has been cleared of criminal liability in the fatal April shooting of a heavily armed man who threatened and shot at his neighbors — wounding one of them — and then proceeded to engage in a nearly half-hour gunbattle with police in which he fired dozens of rounds, authorities said.

Miraculously, only the gunman, 60-year-old Brian Joseph Montana, died in the violent April 28 episode on Arroyo Drive that began with Montana reportedly threatening to kill his next-door neighbors, seemingly over lawn trimmings that blew into his yard. Montana attained some fame in the early- to mid-1980s as a guitarist for the pioneering death metal band Possessed.

A report on the shooting produced by the San Mateo County District Attorney’s Office, released Thursday, fo

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