Video After The Jump
Nicolas Chavez, already weakened by two gunshot wounds, was on his knees and pulling a Taser toward him as four Houston Police Department officers fired a fatal barrage of bullets, according to police video of the encounter.
The officers involved in the April 21 death — identified as Sgt. Benjamin LeBlanc, officers Patrick Rubio, Omar Tapia and Luis Alvarado — were fired Thursday for what police Chief Art Acevedo said was their decision to fire a combined 21 rounds at Chavez, who was suffering from an apparent mental break and who died following their 15-minute encounter in east Houston. Acevedo determined the fatal shots were “not objectively reasonable.”
“You don’t get to shoot somebody 21 times,” Acevedo said. “Because, at the time, Mr. Chavez was at his greatest level of incapacitation.”
Prior to his death, Chavez, 27, had already been shot, stunned and was unable to get up on his own, Acevedo said. The officers, he continued, could have taken two to three steps back when he reached for the spent Taser but instead opened fire.
“I cannot defend that,” Acevedo continued.
Chavez was rushed to a hospital but did not survive. A toxicology report later found traces of meth and alcohol in Chavez’s body at the time of his death.
Concerned citizens first reported seeing a distraught man throwing himself in front of cars along Interstate 10 near Lockwood Street and jumping fences in the Denver Harbor neighborhood. One caller said he had what appeared to be a “metal tube” in his hand. He was bleeding and ranting.
Those calls led police to Chavez, who could be seen frantically huddled under a street light.
“I’m a MHMRA patient and I feel like dying,” Chavez is heard crying out, using an old acronym for the Harris Center mental health clinic.
“That’s fine,” another officer told him. “Have a seat.”
But Chavez paced the parking lot instead, at times stumbling, flailing and stabbing himself with what officers believed was a knife. LeBlanc fired two bean bag rounds at Chavez and Alvarado followed with the Taser. Neither appeared to have an effect and Chavez began walking toward the officers with the metal object.
LeBlanc and another officer, Kevin Nguyen, fired a combined three shots as Chavez approached him and a constable’s deputy. Acevedo said he found only that instance in the 24 total rounds fired to be reasonable.
Source: Houston Chronicle
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