Trial starts for ex-officer, city of Benton in killing

Parents say shooting of teen was unjustified

Jury selection and opening statements marked the start Monday of the trial in a lawsuit filed against the city of Benton, a former Benton police officer — who has since joined the Arkansas State Police — and the former Benton police chief by the parents of a 17-year-old boy who was shot and killed by the officer after his mother called 911 for help.

Piper Partridge and Dominic Schweikle, both of Benton, are suing the city, former Benton officer Kyle Ellison and the former chief of Benton police, Kirk Lane, for unspecified damages in the Oct. 17, 2016, shooting death of their son, Keagan Schweikle.

According to a complaint filed by Partridge and Schweikle’s attorneys, Mark Geragos of Los Angeles and Richard Holliman of Little Rock, Keagan Schweikle, despondent after being suspended from school that day, took a gun from the family home and went into a wooded area nearby threatening suicide, prompting his mother to call 911 for help.

A short time after police arrived and began looking for the teen, Ellison, accompanied by two other officers, encountered the teen standing next to a riverbank in the woods and, within minutes, he was dead, shot twice by Ellison.

The family has accused Ellison of shooting immediately after yelling several times at Keagan, first to show him his hands and then, seeing that the teenager was holding a gun, to drop the gun. Ellison has said that as Keagan began to lower the gun, he began to take aim at the officers, which the family disputes, saying the teen was attempting to comply with

Ellison’s orders but was shot before he could do so.

Ellison, Lane and the city are represented by Arkansas Municipal League attorneys Jenna Adams and Gabrielle Gibson. Current Benton Police Chief Scottie Hodges was also in attendance at the defense table.

During a pre-trial hearing Monday morning, U.S. District Judge Brian Miller, after exchanging pleasantries with the attorneys for both sides, said of the upcoming trial that “this is a tough case … because we’re talking about the death of a young man and the parents of the young man are sitting here bringing the case from their point of view.”

“I have officers here who, the position they take in the case is, ‘We didn’t do anything wrong. We were called to the scene to help, we were faced with danger, we responded,’” Miller said. “Ms. Partridge’s point of view is, ‘Look, I called you to help me and you ended up doing what I was trying to prevent.’ So as we come into this trial we have two sides that totally disagree with the position taken by the other side. It’s an honest dispute.”

Miller talked about the inherent difficulties of the case, which has been moving through the court system since being filed nearly seven years ago and which Miller had dismissed twice and was overturned on appeal both times.

“This is the only case I’ve ever been reversed twice on,” he said. “I’ve never had that happen before but the plaintiffs’ counsel fought it, took it to the court of appeals, the court of appeals reversed me, they didn’t see it the same way I did and they sent it back down here for trial.”

After jury selection, which took about three hours, Geragos and Gibson opened for their clients, telling jurors what they believed the evidence would show as the trial progresses.

Calling the matter “a very difficult case emotionally,” Geragos told the jury, “the facts are fairly simple.”

Geragos said that in October 2016, Keagan Schweikle, one of three brothers, began having problems, “as 17-yearold boys do,” and on Oct. 17, 2016, he was called out of class because he was “nodding out” after ingesting some narcotic cough syrup and was suspended from school. He said Partridge rushed to the school to pick up her son and was prepared to take him to the hospital but had to stop off at home first.

“She’ll tell you she kicks herself about this,” he said. “Her medical card and her billfold were at the house … so she stopped by the house.”

When Partridge got out to go into the house, Geragos said, Keagan also got out, went into the house and retrieved a pistol “and told his mom he was suicidal, that he felt the suspension was the end of his life.”

After Keagan left with the gun, Geragos said, Partridge called police for help.

After police arrived and were unable to locate the teen, Geragos said, Ellison was called and asked to bring his police dog to aid in the search.

“What ends up happening next,” he said, “she’s relived for almost the last eight years.”

After Ellison, who Geragos told the jury has “a sordid history of incidents where people end up dying,” arrived with his police dog, Geragos said the officer didn’t talk to Partridge or to the other officers but instead took off toward the woods and started “tracking Keagan.”

After locating the teen, Geragos said, finding him crouching next to the riverbank facing toward the river, “contemplating God only knows what,” Ellison, within seconds of discovering that Keagan was armed, fired three shots, striking Keagan twice and killing him.

He said Partridge, who was standing several hundred yards away from the scene with another officer, heard the shots but was kept in the dark about what had transpired for several hours.

“No one told her Ellison had shot her son,” Geragos said. “In fact, for several hours she was led to believe he had killed himself.”

The attorney said that after the shooting, the Benton Police Department began trying to “dig up dirt” on the teenager “to deflect from what happened and frankly, to deflect from the fact … that they had no plan and had given Ellison … free rein to do harm to citizens.”

He said police also began harassing Partridge to the point that she eventually left the state.

“She will tell you,” he said, “the 22nd time that the Benton police or Ellison, who is now a state trooper, pulled her over or hassled her or surrounded her, she no longer felt safe in the state where she was born and where her family had been for generations … all because Benton decided they were going to close ranks … they didn’t want to admit they didn’t have anything in place that would have stopped this.”

Gibson, using two aerial photos set on easels of the area police were called to, characterized the shooting as a tragedy on two fronts.

“A tragedy of Keagan Schweikle’s death,” she said, “and a tragedy of officer Ellison having no other choice but to take the life of another just to protect his own.”

Gibson said the question for the jury to answer at the end of the trial is “whether Kyle Ellison’s use of deadly force was justified based on the circumstances he faced.”

Upon his arrival, Gibson said, Ellison and his police dog “Duco” took off down a steep, overgrown trail with two other officers in tow, and upon Duco alerting to the officers after he spotted the boy as the group broke into a clearing, Ellison looked up from the dog “and he saw a male standing there looking at him.”

Gibson said Ellison, alarmed by Keagan’s “lack of expression and failure to respond,” began shouting for Keagan to drop the gun as the boy raised it to his own head. She said Keagan just stared at the officers, devoid of expression “as if he was staring straight through them.”

Then, demonstrating by holding her arm out toward the jury box, Gibson said as Keagan “pointed the gun straight at the officers,” Ellison fired three shots at the teen, killing him.

She said an internal investigation cleared all three officers on the scene of any policy violations and that Ellison was cleared of criminal liability by the prosecuting attorney’s office.

“Although this is a tragedy for all involved,” she said, “we believe the evidence will show officer Ellison’s use of deadly force was justified.”

The trial resumes at 8:30 this morning with Piper Partridge slated to take the stand as the first witness.