Home Forums Hunting & Shooting Hunter's Campfire COPS GUN DOWN MAN FOR LEGALLY CARRYING FIREARM

Ordered to drop the weapon. He proceeds to obey and is shot for reaching for his weapon. No way for a man with harmless intentions to avoid being killed in that circumstance. That's called murder.

To be fair, at least one eye witness had him pointing the weapon at the policeman. Not simply "reaching" so as to put it down.

Who knows though? He could of been handing it to the officer.

Either way, best to not be in that situation to begin with.

As usual,you're clueless as to the facts. Is your reading comprehension at such a elementary level purposely to cover your recurring epic failings or has it been a life long failing?

No, they don't; it's their goal in life.

Those appear to be fungible terms for that poster.

Eyewitness 1:

Fee said she heard the officer yelling at Scott to get down, but he didn't.

She saw Scott reach for something on his side and then bring his right hand up and point something directly at the officer.

Fee said she couldn�t tell what was in Scott�s hand, but his hand was pointed, �directly at the cop.�

The officer fired, and she looked away while pushing her granddaughter behind her, Fee said.

When she looked back, she saw Scott face-down on the ground and a black object on the ground.

After the shots were fired, she heard a woman screaming, �You shot him, you killed him.�

Fee said she was worried Scott was going to shoot the officer.

�I was hoping he wasn�t going to shoot the cop, but with a gesture like that I thought somebody was going to get shot,� she said.

She told police after the shooting that she didn�t think the officer had any option to shoot Scott.


Witness 2:

Christopher Villareale was shopping at Costco the day of the shooting and also is a concealed weapon permit holder.

Villareale said he was one of the last people to leave the store and wasn't far from Scott when he was shot.

He testified that an officer yelled at Scott to get on the ground, �And Mr. Scott is just standing there not doing anything.�

Scott then lifted his shirt with his left hand and someone yelled �no, no,� Villareale said.

Scott then pulled his right arm forward with a gun in his hand, he said.

Villareale said it appeared to him that Scott was holding the gun by the handle, but he couldn't tell if the gun was in a holster since the gun was black.

The officer shot Scott, who turned, dropped the gun, was shot again, then fell to the ground.

Scott�s girlfriend yelled before the shooting that Scott was in the military, and once shots were fired, she became hysterical, Villareale said.

Villareale said he was involved in an incident previously in which he had to pull a gun on somebody, then deal with police when they arrived, so he has safely disarmed with a police officer present.

But Scott didn't respond in a similar and appropriate way, he said.

"He was acting in a way that I would think was not consistent with what would be the appropriate way to act in that situation," Villareale said.

He said he knew the officer thought someone could be harmed during the situation.

"I thought he did the right thing shooting him," Villareale said.

When asked during a question from an interested party, Villareale said it didn't look like Scott was going to hand the gun to the police, but he also didn't point the gun at the officer.

Witness 3:

John Nikitas, a Costco cashier, said he saw Erik Scott and a woman walk through the store. He heard Scott say to the woman that he shouldn�t have been in the store while he was drunk, Nikitas said.

He saw Scott knock a �closed� sign off a counter when he walked by, he said.

After being told to evacuate the store, Nikitas said he saw police officers outside.

The officers told Scott to put his hands up and get on the ground, Nikitas said. He said Scott did neither.

Witness 4:

Eatherton said outside the store they heard an officer tell Scott �don�t touch it,� and �get on the ground.�

He saw Scott move his hand on his right side, then the officer shot him.

Witness 5:

The officer told Scott to get down on the ground, but Scott moved his hand from the front of him toward his right hip, Eatherton said.

The officer yelled �don�t do that,� but Scott continued to move toward his hip, she said.

Witness 6:

The assistant store manager who confronted Erik Scott before Scott was shot testified that the man was acting strangely, his eyes were glossed over and �he did not seem right.�

Vince Lopez was called over to talk to Scott by Shai Lierley, a loss prevention supervisor who testified Thursday. On his way to talk to Scott, an older couple approached him and told him they were concerned about a man, who was Scott.

Lopez said he approached Scott and asked him what he was doing. Scott said he was trying to get water bottles to fit in a bag, but Lopez said Scott was trying the same type of bottles over and over again, even though they obviously would not fit, and he had opened multiple packages.

Lierley pointed out that Scott had a gun and Lopez backed off before approaching again to tell Scott that Costco does not allow guns since it is private club and not open to the public, he said.

Scott became irritated when Lopez told him about the policy, Lopez said. Scott became agitated and began using foul language, he said.

That is when he noticed that Scott�s eyes were glazed over.

Scott held his hands in the shape of a gun and pointed them at Lopez�s head, saying that if someone came in and held a gun to his head that he would take care of it, Lopez said.

Witness 7:

Linda Bem, the Costco employee who helped Scott sign up for a Costco membership earlier that day, is testifying.

Bem said Scott had a hard time understanding her instructions and filling out the proper forms.

Scott�s thought process seemed not to be working correctly, she said. Scott was able to have a conversation, but his responses were not as quick as they should have been, she testified.

His handwriting was illegible and he was writing things in the wrong places, Bem said. Scott then had his girlfriend fill out the form for him and she had no problems.

Scott seemed agitated, but wasn't violent, Bem said. She noticed Scott�s knuckles were bleeding.

Bem reported the odd incident to her supervisor.

�I sensed something was terribly wrong,� she said. �He was confused, his thought processes were very, very slow ... Quite frankly, I was worried about him.�


All but two witnesses address just how [bleep] up the dead dumb guy was while filling out forms and stumbling though the store aisles. The guy was hammered after ingesting alcohol,Xanax and Morphine, a serious crime in and of itself,perhaps even a felony in that state. He was ordered not to touch his weapon and to get to the ground. He did neither. His GF was subpoeaned to testify and refused to appear. There were innocent bystanders all around this interaction and the dead dumb guy could have shot any one of them,much less the cop.

The dead dumb guy has noone to blame but himself.

The backpedaling of the fools here who demonstrated their usual ignorance and agendized blather without first reviewing the facts is truly hilarious reading but, even moreso, you all are a criminal defense lawyer's dream come true. It's folks like you that freed OJ. Be content and stand tall with the role you play in life.

It will be real interesting if there is video available if the video confirms the witnesses testimony. But that may have mysteriously been lost by now.

Lots and lots of video cams at my local Costco.

Didn't read the testimony,did you?

Thanks for posting that, Bob.

You would have me go to work focussed on losing every scuffle or fight and going to the hospital or the morgue rather than safely home? Gene, Gene. Texas air must have too much peyote in it. Going home safely at the end of a shift has got me ten and a half years of my pension, and some good time with my grandkids.

I don't know anything about this case one way or the other, and I don't pretend to.

But there's a fundamental problem with the system here.

Suppose, for the sake of argument, that you're a young lady who witnessed the whole thing, from beginning to end, and that what you saw was that the police gunned down an innocent man with absolutely no provocation and then high-fived each other and laughed about it afterwards.

So now somebody comes up to you and says something professional and polite and standard, but this is what you hear: "Excuse me, Miss. I'm with the government--you know, the folks who suddenly murder innocent people in broad daylight in front of dozens of witnesses for any reason or no reason. We're holding an inquest about the shooting you witnessed. We government folks are pretty sure the officers--who, after all, also work for the government--acted properly, but we'd like to get your statement to verify it. Just a moment while I set up this video camera. Okay...now that we have your name and address, can you tell us what you saw?"

What would you say?

Would you tell the truth?

Why would you assume that anyone would?

I'm not saying that that's what happened; I'm saying that if something like that did happen--in the incident under consideration here or anywhere else--official inquest testimony attached to real names and addresses is not the place you're going to find it.

If you want the government well and truly and honestly investigated, you can't be having the government doing the investigation. It's silly.

Just more proof that you're incapable of applying logic and reason to threads like these.

Keith,if someone near and dear to me is threatened by a "bad guy"with a gun,I'd rather have a non-leo campfire member entrusted with their safety than a cop.The odds of getting a "goodun" out of our membership ranks are better than getting a local LEO who would actually risk his life to save them.

Would you rather have Barak or DINK on the scene when action is called for?I'd take Barak in a heartbeat.

The exceptions to this are ED Bunchanumbers and AHF,who are LEO's,but would act as fathers and husbands rather than as LEO's.There may be some other LEO's among our membership who would step up-and you could be one- but I've shared a campfire with these two.

Cops adopting military TACTICS will continue to be a failure unless military attitudes are adopoted as well.

We were taught that your chances for survival were better if you focused on the MISSION rather than your own safety.

As long as "officer safety" is PARAMOUNT,the mission will suffer.Of course,if the "mission" of the LV cops was to kill anybody with a gun,then it succeeded.

Why did you leave out the rest of Villareale's account?

I think he's speaking hypothetically now. He must be.

"He said he knew the officer thought someone could be harmed during the situation."

And the jury would be instructed to dis-regard this portion of his testimony.........Right,Counseler?

And the part about how he "thought" the dead guy didn't disarm properly....and..

Once his "testimony" is reduced to actual facts,it doesn't help the cops.

Excellent points.

One would think that being he had a confrontation with a store employee regarding his carrying a pistol on private property he would assume that law enforcement may be coming in short order. Add to the fact that he was under the influence of something, and he knew it, that the situation would escalate. Then the store is being evacuated. You would think that he would have connected the dots and realized that maybe, just maybe this was about him and with that he might be wise to do whatever he could to de-escalate the situation as to not get himself shot. Listening to direct commands might be one, not going for his weapon might be another. Now that we are going down the hypothetical trail what if this guy began to take hostages and one of them was one of your own? I highly doubt you would be critiquing the response and actions that happened then.

The scenario you're describing didn't happen. You're engaging in fantasy.

so now your saying the suspect did not get into an argument with a store employee?

now u are truly delusional

it was in bea's first post you tool