Officer: Suicidal man did not pose threat
A suicidal man holding a bottle of lighter fluid in one hand and a lighter in the other did not pose a threat to anyone but himself when he was shot and killed by an Oklahoma City police officer, a fellow officer testified Thursday at trial.
Sgt. Erik Howell said
Dustin Pigeon did not have a gun or a knife in his hands and was not a threat to Howell, officer Troy Nitzky or the defendant, Sgt. Keith Sweeney.
“I did not observe any threatening acts,” Howell testified.
Sweeney, 34, is charged with second-degree murder. He faces 10 years to life in
prison if convicted.
The officer violated nearly every department policy when he shot Pigeon three times, including once in the heart, Oklahoma County District Attorney David Prater told the jury in his opening statement.
Prater called Sweeney's actions “unreasonable” and “unjustified.” The prosecutor said 12 seconds elapsed between the time Sweeney exited his patrol car and fired the fatal shots.
“You will hear two useof-force experts tell you how the defendant in this case violated just about every policy he could have regarding how you deal with the mentally ill and how you deal with a person when you're trying to deescalate the situation,” Prater said.
Sweeney fatally shot Pigeon, 29, about 2: 30 a.m. Nov. 15, 2017, after the victim called 911 threatening suicide, police reported. Officers responded to the courtyard of a housing complex in southwest Oklahoma City and found Pigeon holding a bottle of lighter fluid and a lighter, threatening to set himself on fire, police reported.
Pigeon, who was intoxicated, told the dispatcher he thought he had contracted HIV from a woman and was going to kill himself, according to a recording of the call played for the jury in in District
Judge Natalie Mai's courtroom. Pigeon had poured the lighter fluid on himself and was trying to ignite the lighter, police reported. The first two officers to respond were wearing body cameras. Howell and Nitzky approached Pigeon and attempted to de-escalate the situation, asking him to put down the lighter fluid.
Nitzky also grabbed a less lethal bean bag shotgun before approaching Pigeon.After a few seconds, a third officer, Sweeney, approached Pigeon with his gun drawn yelling, “Drop it!” The video shows the flashlight attached to Sweeney's handgun shining on Pigeon. Sweeney then shouts, “I will f-----shoot you! Get on the ground!”
Pigeon lowers his hands to waist level and Nitzky fires one round from his bean bag shotgun, striking Pigeon in the left hip.
About the same time, Sweeney fires five shots with his 9 mm handgun.As Pigeon fell to the ground, he said, “Oh, s---. Oh, s---.” Sweeney then asked, “Is that a knife in his hand?”
Howell responds, “It's lighter fluid.” Sweeney then tells Nitzky, “I didn't know you had a bean bag.”
Howell, whose body camera footage was played for jurors, said he never removed his pistol from its holster and didn't expect to hear gunfire.
He was asked by the district attorney if he felt the shots fired by Sweeney were necessary.
“Sir, I personally did not,” he said. “I personally did not feel that they were to that point.”
After the shooting, police said Pigeon was a danger to the officers and others as he attempted to ignite the lighter fluid. An investigation later revealed Pigeon was unarmed and “not a threat to the officers when he was shot by Sgt. Sweeney,” a police investigator wrote in a court affidavit.”After presenting the investigation to the Oklahoma County District Attorney's Office, it was determined the use of deadly force, by Sgt. Keith Sweeney, against Dustin Pigeon was not justified,” according to the affidavit.
Prater said Sweeney should not have shouted orders at Pigeon because there were already two officers engaging him.
Defense attorney Gary James told jurors Thursday his client didn't know whether Pigeon had a weapon because the officers didn't notify him by radio. James said Sweeney didn't know that Nitzky was aiming a bean bag shotgun at the victim, even though the weapon is distinguished by bright orange markings.
Sweeney made the proper decision “based on the information he was given,” James said.
“We're talking about in this case seconds and information,” the attorney said. “Those are the two things that are so important in this case, is the time that elapsed and the information that was not given to officer Sweeney to make the proper decision of what's going on.”