Jury indicts officers over Kiwi’s shooting
A United States grand jury has indicted two Colorado sheriff’s deputies in the death of 22-yearold Christchurch-born man Christian Glass.
Glass was shot after calling 911 for roadside assistance while experiencing what his mother described as a mental health crisis, according to online court records.
The indictments of former Clear Creek County Sheriff’s deputies Andrew Buen and Kyle Gould were returned yesterday, five months after Glass was killed. The case has become a flashpoint amid a national outcry for police reforms focused on crisis intervention and deescalation.
Charges against the deputies include second-degree murder, official misconduct, and criminally negligent homicide, according to the court records, which did not provide further details.
Nichole Lentz, spokesperson for the Clear Creek County Sheriff, said both officers had been terminated from employment following the indictments.
The sheriff office’s ongoing internal investigation found ‘‘policy and procedural failures’’, Lentz said, adding that the office’s initial news release following the shooting ‘‘does not reflect the entirety of what happened on that terrible night’’.
Late on June 10, Glass called police because his car had become stuck on an embankment. Body camera videos show him refusing to get out of his car while telling police he was ‘‘terrified’’ and making heart shapes with his hands to officers.
Officers tried to persuade him to leave the car. After more than an hour of negotiations, police said Glass was being uncooperative, and they broke the passenger window and removed a knife from the vehicle. Glass offered to throw two knives out of the window, but the video shows officers telling him not to.
Once the window was shattered, Glass seemed to panic and grabbed a second knife. Police then shot him with bean bag rounds, and shocked him with a stun gun. The video shows Glass twisting in his seat and thrusting a knife at an officer approaching the rear driver’s side window. Then another officer fired his gun, hitting Glass six times, according to the autopsy report.
During a September news conference, Glass’s mother, Sally Glass, said her son suffered from depression, had recently been diagnosed with ADHD, was ‘‘having a mental health episode’’, and was ‘‘petrified’’ the night he was killed. –AP