Body camera video shows deadly police shooting while pickup truck at high school

PUEBLO WEST, Colorado. The family filed a federal lawsuit Tuesday against the Pueblo County Sheriff’s Office after police shot and killed a man in a high school pickup line last year.

Richard Ward, 32, was shot three times in the chest while meeting with MPs on February 22, 2022. Prosecutors from the Tenth Judicial Circuit acquitted both deputies involved in the October phone call, arguing that the deputy who shot was acquitted of his use of force.

“It just destroyed our entire family,” Christy Ward Stamp, Ward’s mother, said at a press conference Tuesday afternoon as her lawyers filed a civil lawsuit against Pueblo County.

“It was really terrible. I don’t even know who I am, but I’m working on it,” she said. – That’s all”.

Ward’s younger brother, Eddie Stamp. who lives out of state, was at a press conference to support his mother.

“It’s annoying,” he said. “It’s so hard to watch the footage and see with your own eyes what happened.”

The family is upset both by what is shown in the video and how the story was presented by the sheriff’s office after the shooting.

Dave Lucero, then Chief Deputy and now Pueblo County Sheriff, briefed reporters at the scene that day. Lucero told reporters that day that Ward “jumped out of the car”. The video shows the deputy pulling Ward out of the car.

“Hearing my little brother say that other people’s parents are reading this story and that other kids in his class are calling my brother an intruder and attacker and that he doesn’t even know how to deal with it,” Eddie Stamp said. .

Ward sat in the car with his mother and her boyfriend, waiting for his little brother to leave Liberty Point International School in Pueblo West. According to family lawyer Darold Killmer, Ward got out of the car to stretch his legs and smoke a cigarette. When he returned, Killmer said he accidentally got into another SUV that looked like his mother’s. Killmer said he quickly got out of the car and walked back to his mother’s car.

“In the worst case, he scared the woman by opening her car door even though it was by accident and nothing happened when he realized his mistake,” Killmer said. “The officers had no reason to believe that Richard had committed any crime, and absolutely no reason to believe that Richard was a danger to them or anyone else.”

According to the district attorney’s decision, the 911 caller reported a suspicious person trying to open the door. The caller claimed that Ward was “on something”.

When Deputy Charles McWhorter arrived at the scene, he drove up to Ward in an SUV and briefly spoke to him. In body camera footage, Ward tells a cop that he’s nervous because he doesn’t like cops. He tells the officer that he feels some anxiety and has a bad experience of being yelled at by the police to stop resisting even though he did nothing wrong.

McWhorter asks if Ward has an ID, and as Ward reaches into his pockets, McWhorter asks if Ward has a gun. Ward tells McWhorter that he might have a penknife.

The body camera of Second Deputy Cassandra Gonzalez, who arrived after McWhorter, shows Ward slipping something into his mouth. Killmer said that Ward had an anxiety disorder and was prescribed medication for it. The deputy demanded to know what Ward had put in his mouth. Ward replied that it was just a pill.

McWhorter dragged Ward out of the SUV to the ground, and they struggled for several seconds. McWhorter drew his service weapon and fired three shots at Ward.

After the shooting from the SUV, the screams of Ward’s mother and her boyfriend are heard asking for information from the deputies.

Aides closed the car door and stood with Ward’s body for almost three minutes until medical help arrived.

> Check out the full length camera footage below. Editor’s note: This video shows the moment of death of a person, which may cause concern for some viewers. It also contains profanity.

“Instead of providing Richard with emergency medical treatment, such as applying pressure to the area of ​​the wound or applying other potentially life-saving measures, both McWhorter and Gonzalez did absolutely nothing,” Killmer’s attorney said. “On the contrary, they contented themselves with waiting for the ambulance to arrive when Richard was already dead.”

An October decision letter from the DA’s critical incidents team said they found that McWhorter and Gonzalez were justified in using force to protect themselves and protect others under the provisions of Colorado law.

“They had reasonable grounds to believe and believed that they and their fellow officers were in imminent danger of being killed or seriously injured,” District Attorney Jeff Chastner wrote.

In the same letter, the district attorney said that McWhorter and Gonzalez feared for their safety because Ward’s mother and boyfriend were still in the car and decided not to assist him until firefighters arrived.

“[McWhorter] said he would feel vulnerable if he lay on the ground helping Richard, as the door would only provide camouflage, not cover,” he wrote.

The Ward family’s lawsuit claims claims under the U.S. Constitution and the Colorado Constitution under the new Colorado Police Reform Act.

“We consider this to be an extremely compelling case of unjustified police brutality leading to the death of a young man with devastating consequences for his mother and family,” Killmer said. “The family has asked us to provide justice for Richard, and we intend to do so.”

For advice on this or any other story, email 9NEWS reporter Steve Steger at [email protected].

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