Cops Still on the Hook for Shooting Teen to Death
(CN) - The 9th Circuit on Friday revived excessive-force claims against police officers who shot and killed an intoxicated Oregon teenager after he had threatened to kill himself with a pocketknife.
Washington County Sheriff's Deputies Tim Mateski and Mikhail Gerba killed 18-year-old Lukus Glenn just four minutes into the late night altercation near Portland in 2006. Glenn had arrived home drunk, violent and suicidal, breaking windows and threatening to slice his own throat with a pocketknife.
Hoping to calm her son, a recent high school graduate with no police record or history of trouble, Hope Glenn called the police. Lukus' parents allegedly told responding officers that their son was a threat only to himself and then went inside the house with the teen's grandmother who lived next door. They heard the boy say, "Tell them to stop screaming at me" and "Why are you yelling?" Seconds later, after a third officer fired two beanbags at Glenn and he appeared to be moving toward the front door, Mateski and Gerba fired eight bullets.
"Lukus bled out and died on his grandmother's porch shortly after he was shot," the ruling states.
http://www.courthousenews.com/2011/11/04/41221.htm