Police shoot man who had pellet gun
Officials say the weapon looked real, orders to show hands disregarded
Houston police shoot and injure a man near St. Thomas University after he reached for a weapon in his waistband that was actually a pellet gun that looked like a handgun.
Two Houston police officers responding to calls of a man waving a gun near the University of St. Thomas in Montrose shot and wounded the man Sunday after he reached for a gun in his waistband, police said.
The weapon turned out a be a pellet gun that looked like a handgun, police spokesman John Cannon said.
The unidentified man, reportedly in his late 20s, was taken to Ben Taub General Hospital, where he was in critical but stable condition Sunday evening.
The two officers were wearing body cameras, but officials did not yet know if they had been activated at the time of the shooting, Cannon said. It was likewise not known if the vehicle had a dash cam; only about 200 Houston police vehicles are equipped with such cameras.
The shooting came just a day after the funeral and a protest march for 38-yearold Alva Braziel, who was fatally shot by police July 9 while waving a gun at the intersection of Cullen and Ward. Braziel did not respond to police requests to drop his weapon, and police said the officers fired when he pointed the weapon at them.
The city last week released graphic body cam videos showing that Braziel had a gun, but activists remained concerned that the video did not capture the shooting.
Braziel’s death ended a week of unrest about police shootings of African-American men in Louisiana and Minnesota that sparked nationwide protests followed by the ambush of law enforcement in Dallas and Baton Rouge, La., that left eight officers dead.
On Sunday, police responded about 3:15 p.m.
when residents near the corner of West Alabama Street and Yoakum Boulevard reported a suspicious person waving a weapon, Cannon said.
When the first officer arrived, he saw a man in cargo shorts standing against the fence of the university. He began to talk to him, but Cannon said the man didn’t respond or “engage in conversation.”
The officer saw the man had a gun tucked into his waistband and told him, “Hey, I need to see your hands.”
The man didn’t respond, Cannon said. The second officer arrived and also tried to talk to the man.
“He disregarded their commands,” Cannon said.
The officers then saw the man reach for his waistband, and both fired their guns several times, hitting him more than once.
The officers, whom Cannon identified only as R. Naughton and J. Baldwin, both have been on the force for three years working the night shift for central patrol. The incident is under investigation, as is standard procedure, he said.
Police showed reporters the pellet gun used by the man in an effort to convey how lifelike it was.
“It’s a replica, but I think after you take a look at that, you will understand what these officers were up against,” Cannon said.
He said the department likely will release more information on Monday when the investigation has had time to proceed.
Minister Robert Muhammad, a black Houston activist and mosque leader who has been critical of police shootings, said he did not know enough about the details in the Sunday incident but called for fairness for everyone. It did not matter that the latest shooting victim is white, he said.
“There is a perception in the black community that we are treated differently and this must be addressed in order to improve police community relations, not only our perception, but the reality of the outcomes of police citizens’ and black citizens’ encounters,” Muhammad said.
He said all police shootings should be scrutinized.
“We want everyone treated equally under the law,” he said. “We’ll be looking at all of (the shootings), where it takes place, regardless what the ethnicity and the color of the person was. We want to look at all of them and see if there is a need for systemic change in police policy and community engagement.”