Video: Pasco, Wash. pigs shoot & ? suspect accused of throwing rocks while his running away...

Pasco Police Chief: “Trust Us,” Angry Demonstrators Gather After Shooting

Tuesday night’s shooting of a man near a popular grocery store by three Pasco police officers has angered many residents there. The shooting was captured in several phone videos now on YouTube. A protest was held outside of Pasco City Hall Wednesday night.

Toddlers, teens, parents and grandparents were all there to protest Tuesday’s police shooting. At first, the grim-faced crowd stood well back from the city hall’s double doors. But then they pressed in close to the threshold.

Police officers were inside.

The person killed Tuesday is identified by his family as Antonio Zambrano-Montes. Pasco police say he was throwing rocks at officers, and struck an officer with one.

Several bystander videos show three police officers chasing after him across a crowded intersection and then shooting him at near range.

This all happened in old-town Pasco near a popular big-box Mexican grocery store. Down the street a bit are Mexican dress shops, bakeries and taquerias. Migrant farm workers came to southeast Washington, stayed, bought houses and set up businesses here.

Antonio Zambrano-Montes died in old-town Pasco on the sidewalk.

His cousin is Maria Madrigal. She says Zambrano-Montes was a small-statured man. And she asks even if he had a rock, how come the police couldn’t tackle him or taze him?

“I’m 5’3, so I would say he’s a little bit shorter than me," Madrigal says. "I would probably say 5’1 or 5. He was a short guy, a small guy. I probably could have probably took him down. I probably could have took him down. But, it’s still in a way hard to believe. Seeing his name announced, that it was for sure him. Cause even last night they wouldn’t let my mom identify the body at least. ‘Cause we had a really strong feeling that it was him.”

Madrigal did say her cousin had fallen on tough times lately. He’d been working hard at odd jobs, his wife had recently left him and taken their two daughters to California. Madrigal said that when she would cut his hair, he wouldn’t talk to her the way he used to.

Madrigal says she’s upset her cousin’s body laid in the street overnight.

“I don’t understand why they couldn’t remove the body," Madrigal says. "They could still continue investigation without the body. To me it’s like just leaving a dead animal out there.”

For their part, Pasco police aren’t saying if they found a gun or weapons at the scene. They say three investigations have to take place before they will be saying much more about the case.

The Tri-City Special Investigation Unit is looking into the matter. The Washington State Patrol Crime lab is involved. And an internal investigation by the Pasco police is also underway. Pasco Police Chief Bob Metzger says he’s grieving with the town.

“I would ask the people trust us because certainly over the last 20 years with community policing, we’ve been very much involved in our community," Metzger says. "And I would hope that they have enough trust in us to know that we’re going to do the right thing for our community because we all care about this community a great deal.”

The three officers involved are on paid administrative leave until these investigations conclude. Outside, several protesters told me that they believe the police in Pasco haven’t served the community fairly in the past.

Thirty-five-year-old Junior Valencia of Kennewick told me, “This can not happen, this can not happen.”

“People are tired of it, people are tired of it, and this shows today that we are tired of it," Valencia says. "It’s not a color, it’s not a race, it’s not about anything else. It’s about we’re all humans. We need to understand that we need to fight for our rights as community, as a people.”

News and talk of the shooting is jamming Spanish language radio stations, Twitter and Facebook. Zambrano-Montes’ family is considering a lawsuit and protesters are talking of further marches and vigils into the weekend.

Police will not face charges in Pasco shooting death of Mexican man

Three police officers in Washington state who shot and killed a Mexican man earlier this year during a controversial encounter that was captured on cellphone video will not face criminal charges.

Franklin County prosecutor Shawn Sant decided Pasco police officers Ryan Flanagan, Adam Wright and Adrian Alaniz should not be prosecuted for the death of Antonio Zambrano-Montes on 10 February, attorneys for his parents told the Guardian.

Attorney Jose Baez said Zambrano-Montes’s family was “sorely disappointed” and “sharply disagrees” with the decision.
“This forces us to seek justice for Antonio and his family in a different forum, one of the family’s choosing, not in the police home court. Shortly, we will be filing a federal civil rights lawsuit on behalf of the proper plaintiffs,” Baez said in a statement.
Sant confirmed the decision at a press conference on Wednesday afternoon after considering the findings of a police investigation into the shooting for more than three months. He said Zambrano-Montes was fatally shot for turning towards police with a 2.8lb rock in his hand after repeatedly throwing other rocks at police and cars.
“The officers used lethal force to prevent injury to themselves and others,” said Sant, who described the shooting as “reasonable under the standards established in our state laws” and lacking in malice.

During a chaotic announcement, the prosecutor was heckled by several furious supporters of Zambrano-Montes’s family, who demanded that he resign, accused him of having “blood on his hands” and shouted: “No justice, no peace.”
Dismissing allegations that Zambrano-Montes was shot in the back, Sant said three autopsies found that the fatal shot entered his body from the side, apparently as he turned towards the officers. Police fired a total of 17 shots, he said.

The prosecutor said witnesses recounted that Zambrano-Montes was “hysterical and screaming” and repeatedly told police officers to ? him. A toxicology report found extremely high levels of methamphetamine in his blood, he added. Officers tried to shock him with a Taser and shot him in an arm before the final encounter.

Police had been dispatched to deal with reports that Zambrano-Montes was throwing the rocks at cars. A motorist recorded video of his encounter with police. The footage showed officers chasing Zambrano-Montes as he ran away from them and between traffic. As he turned back towards officers with a rock in his hand, officers opened fire until he collapsed.

Sant said on Wednesday he “recognised the concern” about what was shown in the video footage, which led to peaceful protests in Pasco.

Hundreds of pages of files from the investigation of the shooting were released in July. Among the most startling findings included the fact that none of the officers involved were interviewed about the incident until nearly three months later.

When investigators asked one officer, Flanagan, why he pursued Zambrano-Montes and was prepared to use deadly force, he replied: “I wasn’t chasing him down to shoot and ? him. But he wasn’t going to get away, either.”

The investigator asked why, with “three officers, one suspect and … one rock”, Flanagan feared for his life and the safety of others. Flanagan replied: “Well, one rock can ? you.” The officer resigned from the department in June for what the city’s police chief described as unrelated reasons.

Despite Wednesday’s decision, it is still possible that the case could end up before a jury. Franklin County coroner Dan Blasdel has said repeatedly that he intends to hold an inquest into the death. “A jury needs to make the decision whether the shooting was justified or not,” he told the local NBC affiliate in an interview.

In Franklin County, the coroner does have the authority to impanel a jury to determine a cause of death. But because the cause of death, homicide, is not in question, Sant has questioned the rationale of an inquest. “The purpose of an inquest is not to find who is necessarily responsible for the death or who should be charged it’s to figure out how the person died,” he told KVEW.