Chaplain recalls role in shooting
Happenstance is a powerful force. Lots of stuff happens by happenstance. Perhaps happenstance is how you happened upon the person who happened to become your spouse. It happens.
Happenstance is how Charles Kleinert and Regina Bethune met for a two-minute encounter on July 26, 2013, as she was leaving her job and he was doing his. She’s a hospital chaplain. He was a cop.
We’re now awaiting U.S. District Judge Lee Yeakel’s decision on possible dismissal of the indictment against Kleinert, the now-ex-Austin Police Department detective charged with manslaughter in the death that day of fleeing bankfraud suspect Larry Jackson Jr.
Bethune and Kleinert testified last week about how they happened to come together that day when Kleinert, running after Jackson, got into Bethune’s SUV.
Moments earlier, Jackson sprinted away from Kleinert, who was investigating an earlier, unrelated robbery at Benchmark Bank on West 35th Street. The detective questioned Jackson after bank officials said Jackson sought to get into the closed bank while claiming to be a customer they knew he was not.
Bethune testified she was headed home around 3:55 p.m. after what had been “a pretty hectic” day when Kleinert got into her Ford Escape near Seton Shoal Creek Hospi-
tal. An ordained minister, Bethune serves as Seton Healthcare Family’s director of chaplain services and clinical pastoral education.
Bethune told Yeakel she “saw a man running into the middle of the street.”
That man was Kleinert, a plainclothes cop on a not-so-plain mission that ended with Jackson’s death.
Kleinert, she testified, was yelling and waving his arms and “trying to get my attention” and “banged on the passenger side” front window of her vehicle. Bethune said she’s cautious about people in the parking lot because Seton Shoal Creek is a psychiatric hospital.
‘I needed to be calm’
The man, she testified, identified himself as a cop and got into her unlocked vehicle.
“I knew I needed to be calm,” Bethune testified, adding she wasn’t sure he was a cop and was less sure of what was going on.
By training, Bethune is comfortable dealing with troubled people. And she seems to be a woman used to focusing conversations with those people. So picture this cast for the two minutes that these two people’s paths happened to cross on that summer Friday: Agitated, out-of-breath, manof-few-words cop meets woman who might often tell folks, “Let’s use our words.”
Hollywood could make that funny. This wasn’t Hollywood.
“I knew something was going on that I needed to give my full attention to,” Bethune recalled, adding that she sought to “de-escalate the situation.”
Kleinert, she said, was agitated and limited his words to things like, “Go, go. Follow him.”
“I was just focusing on staying calm ... trying to figure out what I was in the midst of,” she testified, insisting, “The commands he made to me were of a command nature.”
‘I requested a ride’
Later, in last week’s hearing, Kleinert offered a different characterization of how he met Bethune. “I requested a ride from Ms. Bethune,” he testified. “I did not commandeer a vehicle. I requested a ride.”
Bethune testified that Kleinert had left her in the dark about what was going on.
The chase, which Kleinert testified did not put Bethune in danger, ended when he exited her SUV near the bridge under which Jackson was killed with a bullet to the back of his neck from Kleinert’s gun. Kleinert insists it was an accident during a scuffle.
Bethune said she called her husband (longtime University Baptist Church pastor the Rev. Larry Bethune). “The weirdest thing just happened to me,” she told him. It wasn’t until news accounts later that evening that she realized just how weird it was.
Kleinert, in response to questions from Assistant Travis County District Attorney Ken Ervin, testified, “It wasn’t necessary” to get into Bethune’s car.
Ervin asked if it was proper.
“I don’t see any problem with it,” Kleinert replied.
A jury might, if Yeakel rejects Kleinert’s claim for immunity under federal law and the case goes to trial.
Regardless of how this happens to end, we know this: Jackson’s death did not have to happen. Bad choices make for bad chases.