LONG BEACH, Calif. – Angry relatives of a man shot to death by police who apparently mistook a pistol-grip water nozzle he held for a gun are lashing out at officers, saying they made no effort to contact him before opening fire.
However, police officials say Douglas Zerby's behavior prompted the officers' response.
"As the subject was in a seated position, he used a two-handed pistol-grip hold on an object with his arms fully extended," Long Beach Police Chief Jim McDonnell said. "Somebody that is impaired and waving what appears to witnesses and police to be a handgun. That's what the officers were faced with."
Zerby pointed it at one of the officers and two officers fired their weapons, a handgun and a shotgun. A total of eight shots were fired — two from shot guns and six from a handgun, McDonnell said.
Zerby's sister, Eden Marie Biele, said officers made no attempt to talk to her 35-year-old brother or get his attention before shooting him to death.
"They didn't say 'Put your hands up' or 'Freeze' or anything," Biele told The Associated Press Monday. "He was killed in cold blood."
Biele was among the family members whose sobs were heard among McDonnell's explanations of the events leading to Zerby's death on Sunday.
"This is a very unfortunate set of circumstances and leaves the family to deal with it here," McDonnell said, offering his condolences to the Zerby family.
The Long Beach officers were dispatched to an apartment building after two people reported a man with a gun sitting on a backyard porch landing, McDonnell said. In an excerpt of a 911 call played for reporters, a male caller said the man appeared to have a "tiny six-shooter."
http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20101214/ap_on_re_us/us_water_nozzle_shooting_5
Be careful watering your lawn now. The cops may shoot you. Of course the cops will most likely only get a suspension even though they murdered a man for no reason.
Comments
One of the few times we give them tasers they use it on a man with a gun pointed at his own head...in the rain.:facepalm:
seriously wtf?! a nozel from a garden hose looks nothing like a gun. i havnt seen any GUN that looks like that except in like startrek or other scifi movies.
I saw the footage of that guy. Apparently he can't even push himself around :facepalm: Pretty fucked up.
The wheel chair thing was kinda fucked up but the rest of those protesters deserved to be shot for desecrating the statue of Winston churchhill among other things. Get the fuck off this site you liberal cunt sack of shit. I spit upon the kid with brain damage. Liberals like you really do make me physically sick.