2nd officer says man didn't pose any threat
An Oklahoma City police officer who took the witness stand Friday expressed a reluctance to testify in the trial of a fellow police officer who shot and killed an unarmed suicidal man.
Sgt. Keith Sweeney, 34, is charged with second-degree murder. He faces 10 years to life in prison if convicted.
Prosecutors allege the shooting was unreasonable and unjustified.
Officer Troy Nitzky was subpoenaed to testify for the prosecution. He told Oklahoma County District Attorney David Prater he knew Sweeney and had worked with him.
“Are you happy to be here?” Prater asked Nitzky.
“I'd rather not be,” the officer replied.
Sweeney fat ally shot Dust in 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 had poured the lighter fluid on himself and was trying to ignite the lighter, police reported.Nitzky and Erik Howell were the first two officers to respond. Both were wearing body cameras. They approached Pigeon and attempted to deescalate the situation, asking him to put down the lighter fluid and lighter. Nitzky also grabbed a less lethal bean bag shotgun before approaching Pigeon.
A few seconds later, 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 (expletive) 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, (expletive). Oh, (expletive).”
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.”Nitzky's body camera footage was played for jurors. The officer said Pigeon wasn't following his commands so he “racked” the bean bag shotgun toge this attention.
“I didn't feel like he was listening ,” he said .“It almost seemed like I was talking at him.”
Still, Nitzky didn't view Pigeon as a threat.
“Me, personally? No,” he said. Howell, who testified Thursday, told jurors he didn't think Pigeon was a threat to Howell, Nitzky or Sweeney.
Nitzky was not as forthcoming when asked if he perceived Pigeon to be a threat to the other two officers.
Howell' s testimony angered defense attorney Gary James, who asked District Judge Natalie Mai to declare a mistrial. The attorney said Howell wasn't speaking for his client and there marks would prejudice the jury.
The judge denied the request.
James con tends
Sweeney didn' t know whether Pigeon had a weapon because the other officers didn't notify him by radio. The attorney
said Sweeney didn't know 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 Thursday during his opening statement.” 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 too fficer Sweeney to make the proper decision of what's going on.”
Prater said Sweeney violated nearly every department policy when he shot Pigeon three times, including once in the heart.