DA: OFFICERS’ ACTIONS JUSTIFIED IN SHOOTING
Report details Oct. 14 events leading up to police firing, resulting in man’s death at Petco
OROVILLE » Butte County District Attorney Mike Ramsey concluded an investigation into a fatal officer-involved shooting on the night of Oct. 14, 2020, resulting in the death of 30-year-old Stephen Vest outside of a Petco store, finding that the three officers’ actions were justified.
Ramsey released the findings during a press conference held Thursday morning inside the Butte County administrative building, which was also attended by Chico Police Chief Matt Madden, and livestreamed on Facebook.
At approximately 7:56 p.m. on the night of Oct. 14, Sgt. Nick Bauer and officer Will Page were the first to arrive at the Petco store, and upon their arrival observed a store employee and truck driver, both of whom were unloading merchandise at the store, getting chased by Vest into the store through a loading dock with a knife in hand.
After initially heading toward the loading dock, the officers reverted back to the front of the store. Officer Tyler Johnson also arrived in a separate patrol car.
According to body camera footage, which was also released Thursday, the two men ran out
the front door of the store, followed by Vest, who then turned to his right in the direction of the three officers. Page deployed his taser, striking Vest, who flinched slightly but kept walking toward the officers. Johnson fired a total of nine shots, and Bauer two shots, as Vest fell face forward to the ground. He was later pronounced dead at the scene.
Toxicology results also revealed Vest had a substantial amount of methamphetamine in his system, approximately 1.2 milligrams per liter. Ramsey said Vest was experiencing psychosis caused by methamphetamine, which mirrors symptoms of schizophrenia.
Events leading up to shooting
According to the report, the first 9-1-1 call reached the Chico Dispatch Center at 7:29 p.m. on Oct. 14, when a man, who was playing tennis with his 15-yearold daughter on a court at Community Park, saw a man wearing dark clothes, later identified as Vest, who appeared to be under the influence of drugs walking around a nearby pickleball court with a knife in his hand. Vest was also bloodied.
The daughter went to their car to retrieve a cell phone, and as she walked back toward the court, Vest approached her and appeared to reach out and touch her back. He wiped his bloody finger on her T-shirt. As the father approached, Vest walked away.
The call was dispatched to responding officers as a “high priority event.” Bauer and Johnson responded to the park and searched for Vest, but were unable to find him. After contacting the parties who had seen Vest earlier, the officers downgraded the call and went on with their normal patrol duties.
Bauer also relayed the report of the man with a knife to an AG Private Security guard, contracted with the Chico Recreation and Park District to patrol the park.
At 7:47 p.m., the guard was in his marked vehicle in the parking lot of the Community Park Field House to the south of the tennis and pickleball courts when he heard the sound of someone crying out for help in the direction of a grassy baseball field.
The guard couldn’t see anyone initially, but upon turning on his overhead light bar, saw a person matching Vest’s description walking from the field toward him.
The guard saw Vest’s left arm was bloody from his elbow to his fingertips. An autopsy later confirmed abrasions and slashes consistent with knife marks, according to the report.
Initially, the guard thought Vest may have been a victim of an attack and asked, “What can I do to help?” The guard said Vest did not reply, and instead, pulled out a knife from his right pocket, described as “six inches from tip to hilt, with a dark handle and silver-colored blade.”
Vest, according to the guard, reached through the partially opened front passenger window and attempted to stab him with the knife. The guard said the knife came within an inch and a half of his right bicep. The guard then put his car in drive as Vest was on the hood and accelerated, causing Vest to roll off the hood. The guard continued to follow Vest as he headed toward Dr. Martin Luther King Parkway, at one point yelling to Vest to get on the ground. Vest then approached a van where three people, who were apparently homeless, were watching a movie. Vest grabbed jumper cables under the hood of the van, and carried them in addition to the knife.
As Vest continued to the south, the report described his entry into the intersection of East 20th Street and Dr. Martin Luther King Parkway as “chaotic.”
First, a Subaru SUV attempted to turn left from 20th Street onto the southbound parkway, when the driver said a man seemingly appeared out of nowhere and jumped on the hood of his vehicle and began stabbing at the windshield, creating cracks in the windshield. He accelerated enough for Vest to fall off the vehicle.
A husband and wife driving a Toyota Prius two cars behind the Subaru saw a glimpse of what happened and initially thought Vest had been the victim of a hit and run. The wife rolled down her passenger window and asked if Vest was OK. The report stated Vest responded by taking his knife, reaching down and slashing the vehicle’s right front tire. They drove down the west side of MLK Parkway, before coming to a stop across the street from Petco as the tire flattened.
A few more confrontations between motorists, including one man on a motorcycle, and Vest were also reported as he crossed over the intersection.
His actions in the intersection lasted for approximately five minutes, after which he continued toward the Petco store on the corner near the loading dock.
Officers arrive
The Petco employee and truck driver encountered Vest after they heard and saw much of what had happened in the intersection. Vest started toward them, and they backed up and yelled for him to get away.
Vest then jumped into the rear of the truck, apparently throwing items out of the truck and banging his head against pallets, before the truck driver retrieved a pistol from the cab and made it visible to Vest in his waistband.
At almost the same time Chico police vehicles were arriving at the scene, Vest began chasing the two men into the loading bay.
As Bauer and Page converged on the scene, the two can be heard on Page’s body-camera footage deciding who will be the lethal and non-lethal use of force. Page says he’s got the nonlethal Taser.
Ramsey suggested Bauer had not turned on his bodyworn camera because Bauer was the supervising officer and preoccupied with coordinating the response.
They initially followed Vest into the store through the loading dock, yelling for him to get on the ground. Vest disappears around a corner and they decide to run back outside toward the front of the store.
The report also states that the two men being chased alerted two female employees already inside the store to hide. Initially, they thought it was a joke, but upon seeing Vest holding a knife, they ran into the store’s break room in an attempt to hide.
The two men then exited the front of the store, and were told by Page and Bauer to get out of the area, the report stated. They ran behind the officers, while Johnson pulled up in his marked patrol car.
Vest then exited the store and turned to his right, walking in the direction of the three officers. They yelled at Vest to drop his knife.
With Bauer on the left, Page in the middle and Johnson on the right, next to the driver’s side of his patrol car, Page yelled that he was deploying his Taster. The nodes struck Vest from approximately 17 feet away, which Ramsey noted was an optimal distance for a Taser deployment.
The Taser had little effect on Vest — only a slight flinch — and he advanced toward Johnson. At a distance of approximately 11 or 12 feet, Johnson fired his 9mm semi-automatic pistol nine times and Sgt. Bauer fired his .45 caliber semi-automatic pistol twice.
An autopsy performed found Vest sustained eight gunshot wounds.
According to the report, Johnson believed he fired between four and six times.
“Why the huge differences between nine shots and two shots? Mr. Vest was coming directly at officer Johnson,” Ramsey said. “Officer Johnson was firing as quickly and as fast as he could, appropriately so, to stop a threat that was coming right at him. When Mr. Vest fell down, and started to go down, he did not go just completely down. … As he was going down to that one knee, officer Johnson continued to follow that threat down to make sure it stopped. When he saw that the threat was stopped, indicated it took an additional three to four shots to just kind of stop the action.”
The shooting officers, Johnson and Bauer, were placed on administrative leave pending the investigation. Chief Madden was asked when they were permitted to return to the field, and though he did not provide specific dates, said it was “weeks” after the shooting.
“We will not return an officer back to full duty until we’ve examined the administrative side to make sure that there were not policy violations,” Madden said. “We also are very concerned about our officers — this is a traumatic event for anybody involved in this type of situation. There is a process for us to include psychological examinations and we do not return officers back to the field unless myself as chief is convinced that they are in sound mental and physical condition.”
The report said each of the three officers involved are “all experienced officers.” Bauer has been with the department for 14 years; Johnson, who worked for the Gridley Police Department, has a combined 12 years of experience; Page has worked for the Chico Police Department for four years.
Vest’s background
As this newspaper previously reported, Vest was a longtime Paradise resident, living in his grandparents’ house until it burned down in the 2018 Camp Fire. Vest had little family left, as his grandfather had passed away a couple years earlier, and he lost his father during his childhood. Many of Vest’s Paradise friends were also dealing with their own challenges in the aftermath of the fire.
Vest became homeless as a result of the fire and was most often bouncing around shelters in Chico.
The report detailed a long list of contacts Vest had with police dating back to Dec. 19, 2019. In most interactions, Vest was cooperative and cordial with police, though some were not.
On Jan. 3, 2020, Oroville police officers responded to the county human resources building, not far from where Thursday’s press conference was held, for a report of a man hitting cars in the parking lot with a belt.
The report stated a “violent struggle” ensued between Vest and officers until he was placed in a wrap restraint device. Officers believed he was under the influence of drugs. A Butte County Jail nurse later took Vest’s vitals and would not admit him to the jail. Instead, he was taken to Oroville Hospital and treated.
Two months later on March 6, Chico police officers were called to Ulta Beauty Store at 2068 Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. Parkway after a subject attempted to take a female customer’s backpack.
Officers found a man matching the subject’s description, later identified as Vest, near the Costco gas station across the street. One of the officers on the scene was Tyler Johnson.
Officers asked Vest if he had touched anyone at the Ulta Beauty Store, which he denied. As Vest began to walk away, officers grabbed him and another confrontation ensued. Vest was put in a wrap restraint device, and later yelled for officers to shoot him, according to the report. Vest also bit an officer on the leg. Once booked into the Butte County Jail, Vest was placed on suicide watch.
According to Ramsey, Vest said something similar to the truck driver at Petco after the driver told Vest to stay away and told him he was armed. Ramsey was asked on Thursday, taking into consideration Vest’s past suicidal behavior, if he believed Vest intended to provoke an officer or someone else into killing him on that Oct. 14 night.
“Whether we say he intended to do suicide by cop, at this juncture, is a bit speculative,” Ramsey said. “Wouldn’t be inappropriate speculation, but obviously the officers can’t look into his mind at that point. The civilian witnesses did indicate that they felt, and one officer, as I recall, (said Vest had) a ‘dead stare’ coming toward the officers.”
Ramsey also answered several questions regarding Vest’s mental state, specifically whether or not he was experiencing a mental health crisis.
Ramsey dismissed that idea, instead arguing that Vest being under the influence of methamphetamine was the underlying cause of the mental state he was in, and furthermore, said Vest was nonviolent in previous contacts with law enforcement when he wasn’t under the influence.
During court proceedings in April for the felony counts he was charged with in the March 6 incident, Vest’s defense attorney raised the question of his mental competency to stand trial. A court-appointed forensic clinical psychologist declared Vest was mentally competent to stand trial.
The report stated, “The doctor found no history of mental health disorders other than the methamphetamine-induced psychotic disorder, which with continued abstinence from methamphetamine, ‘the symptoms appear(ed) to have largely improved and resolved.”
Madden and Ramsey also faced questions about deescalating the situation, and why that didn’t happen in this instance. Ramsey said deescalation requires two things — a person who is listening and an adequate amount of time.
“Neither of which these officers had,” Ramsey said. “It was obvious Mr. Vest was not listening, and it was a very, very short period of time, as indicated the (time) from (Vest) coming out from the front of the Petco was about 8.4 seconds.”
Ramsey fielded another question from the Facebook Live stream written by Scott Rushing, the father of Tyler Rushing, who was killed by Chico police on July 23, 2017, after a standoff at Mid Valley Title and Escrow. Until the Oct. 14 shooting of Vest, the fatal shooting of Rushing had been the last officer-involved shooting by Chico police officers.
The question, which was relayed aloud to Ramsey during the press conference, stated, “Mr. Ramsey, you are minimizing the gravity of these questions, being cavalier in my point of view,” Rushing said. “A young man was killed. Please share with the public what you will do as the top law enforcement officer in the county to not only protect the officers and civilians in crisis.”
Ramsey responded, “Do what we do every day, which is to protect the public from people that take violent actions. Mentally ill folks and people that are on drugs sometimes take violent actions. The officers try their best, as indicated by (Chief Madden), not to escalate the situation.
Madden and Ramsey concluded their comments by acknowledging the tragedy of Vest’s death juxtaposed to their commendations of the officers’ response.
“The Chico Police Department accepts the findings of this investigation,” Madden said, reading from a prepared statement. “I want to extend my condolences to the friends and family of Mr. Vest. I know that I speak for all of our Chico police officers when I say that we all hope that we are never put in another situation where we are forced to use deadly force.”
“We will not return an officer back to full duty until we’ve examined the administrative side to make sure that there were not policy violations. We also are very concerned about our officers — this is a traumatic event for anybody involved in this type of situation.”
— Matt Madden, Chico chief of police