A former Arizona cop was cleared of murder on Thursday in the fatal shooting of an unarmed man who cried and begged police not to pull the trigger just moments before he was killed.
The verdict cleared Philip Mitchell Brailsford, 27, of criminal liability in the death of Daniel Shaver, a married father-of-two from Granbury, Texas.
The shooting occurred in January 2016, after police responded to reports that someone in the Phoenix suburb of Mesa was pointing a gun out the window of La Quinta Inn.
Shaver was unarmed, although police later found two pellet rifles related to his pest-control job inside his hotel room.
Newly-released body camera footage shows responding officers screaming at Shaver to exit his hotel room, lay facedown in the hallway, and refrain from making sudden movements.
The graphic video shows Shaver complying with orders to crawl towards the officers when Brailsford fires his rifle.
The former cop said he believed Shaver was grabbing a handgun in his waistband.
A detective investigating the shooting said while it may have looked as if Shaver were reaching for a gun, it also appeared that he was pulling up his loose-fitting basketball shorts that had fallen down when he was ordered to crawl.
The officers could have simply handcuffed Shaver while he was on the floor, the detective added.
“There are no winners in this case, but Mitch Brailsford had to make a split-second decision on a situation that he was trained to recognize as someone drawing a weapon and had one second to react,” his attorney Michael Piccarreta said.
“He didn’t want to harm Mr. Shaver… The circumstances that night that were presented led him to conclude that he was in danger. Try to make a decision in one second, life or death. It’s pretty hard.”
Brailsford was on the Mesa police force for two years before he was fired for violations of departmental policy, including unsatisfactory performance.
Shaver’s widow, Laney Sweet, shook her head “no” after the jury’s decision and said she wasn’t going to answer any questions.
Both Sweet and Shaver’s parents have filed wrongful-death lawsuits against the city of Mesa over the shooting death.
With News Wire Services.
