Two of the six jurors in the divided King County inquest jury questioned the legitimacy of the Seattle police officer’s decision to shoot Iosia Faletogo in the back of the head after a foot chase and struggle with authorities in 2018. They also stated that Faletogo died by criminal methods.
According to a family lawyer, the outcome calls into question the police’s justification for the shot.
The King County prosecuting attorney’s office will be consulted regarding the findings. After reviewing the case, the office’s public integrity team will decide whether to reexamine its October decision to not charge Seattle police officer Jared Keller with Faletogo’s death.
In an email on Tuesday, Senior Deputy Prosecuting Attorney Joseph Marchesano, who is the author of the October report and reviews police-involved deaths for the Prosecuting Attorney’s Office, stated that he would examine the conclusions and remarks made by inquest jurors as they responded to over 80 factual questions regarding Faletogo’s death on New Year’s Eve 2018.
We can take action if there is material in there that could influence our analysis or make us want to look into it further, he said.
At approximately 5 p.m. on December 31, 2018, Faletogo, 36, was in a vehicle that was pulled over by police on Aurora Avenue North in North Seattle. Six police officers rushed after Faletogo as he fled the car and ran across the crowded street, where they tackled and piled on him. Faletogo possessed a firearm, which police later said was stolen, according to graphic body camera footage.
Faletogo was found to have a firearm, fled from police following a traffic stop, and engaged in a life-or-death struggle with six policemen, including Keller, who was the only one to discharge a weapon, according to the six-member inquest jury.
The inquiry jury unanimously found that the gun fell out of Faletogo’s grasp during the struggle and that Keller never saw it in his hand after he was tackled. According to the jury, Keller thought Faletogo was grabbing for a gun and would fire the police if he did.
Body camera footage captured Faletogo responding to cops’ repeated orders to stop reaching by repeating, “Nope! Not reaching!” prompted concerns about the shooting. seeking a pistol he dropped in the altercation.
Keller did not hear Faletogo say it, the jurors concluded.
According to the Prosecuting Attorney’s Office’s inquiry and inquest testimony, there was just a 0.14-second lag between Faletogo’s statement and the gunshot.
In his analysis of Faletogo’s shooting, Marchesano stated that the law gives officers the benefit of the doubt because they frequently make split-second, life-or-death decisions under stressful, uncertain, and quickly changing circumstances. He also stated that Faletogo was probably in the process of surrendering to officers when he was shot.
The inquest jury deliberated for over two days following ten days of testimony. To evaluate all police-related deaths, King County calls an inquest jury. Six jurors are asked a number of factual questions regarding the facts, such as whether the implicated officers followed departmental and state law and whether the death was caused by criminal activity.
One juror voted in favor of Keller’s compliance with the Police Department’s de-escalation protocols, four stated they were unsure, and one did not respond. Three voted in favor of Keller’s compliance with the city’s use-of-force principles, which are general guidelines on the application of the department’s use-of-force policies, while the other three voted against it.
The divided jury, according to Mohammad Hamoudi, a Seattle lawyer who represented Faletogo’s family at the inquest, calls into question the defense of the use of force offered by the six participating police officers, including Officer Keller, and the two expert witnesses who were called to testify, one of whom was a Seattle police sergeant.
Hamoudi claimed that the family’s expert, a former instructor at the state’s Basic Law Enforcement Academy, was not permitted to comment on whether the traffic stop that came before the shooting was lawful.
According to him, this absence calls into question the thoroughness of the inquest and if this viewpoint may have persuaded more jurors to consider the murder to be unlawful. It is impossible to overlook the fact that a third of the jury considered the episode to be illegal.
A lawsuit brought by Faletogo’s family has already been settled by the city of Seattle for $515,000.
Even while all six jurors agreed that Keller shot Faletogo in good faith, two of them believed that Keller killed Faletogo illegally and that the shooting was not legal.
One jury said in remarks attached to the list of 86 interrogation questions the panel answered, “The system (trains) and produces policies that give officers no other option than to remove the threat by deadly force.”
Another note, written in a different script, stated that a continuous evaluation of the threat ought to have been taking place. It mentioned that Faletogo had dropped his gun and that Keller was outnumbered six to one when he attempted to shoot him once but that his gun jammed. He fired again into the back of Faletogo’s skull after clearing the weapon, according to testimony and body camera footage.
Keller ought to have taken a moment to consider the circumstances before addressing the problem with his gun. The juror stated that if he had, he would have noticed that Faletogo had lowered the gun and was stating, “Not reaching!” when he was shot, and that the degree of resistance had lessened.
In light of this, the jury wrote, “I do not believe lethal force was necessary at that moment.”
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