Officers cleared in death of deaf man

OKLAHOMA CITY — An Oklahoma prosecutor announced Friday that he won’t charge a police officer who fatally shot a deaf man, determining the killing was legally justified after the man aggressively approached the officer while armed with a 2-foot metal pipe.

Oklahoma County District Attorney David Prater cleared Officer Chris Barnes in the Sept. 19 shooting of 35-year-old Magdiel Sanchez outside his south Oklahoma City home. A second officer who shot Sanchez with a Taser, Lt. Matt Lindsey, also acted justifiably, Prater said.

Police have said officers who responded to a hit-and-run crash encountered Sanchez holding a metal pipe. Police have said previously that witnesses yelled “he can’t hear you” before the officers fired, but that the officers didn’t hear them. Prater suggested Friday that the fact Sanchez was deaf was not the reason he was killed, noting that both officers were in uniform, were driving in clearly marked patrol cars with emergency lights activated and were signaling to Sanchez to put down the weapon. John Bernard Feit guilty of murder Thursday night. Prosecutors asked jurors Friday for a 57-year prison term — one year for each year he had walked free since killing Irene Garza after she went to him for confession at Sacred Heart Catholic Church in McAllen, Texas.

The 25-year-old Garza disappeared April 16, 1960. Her bludgeoned body was found days later. An autopsy revealed she had been raped while unconscious, beaten and suffocated.

Feit also had been accused of attacking another young woman in a church in a nearby town just weeks before Garza’s death. He pleaded no contest and was fined $500 in that case.