$2.2 million settlement ends lawsuit over Manteca police shooting
By Denny Walsh, The Sacramento Bee | |
McClatchy-Tribune Information Services |
After the shooting, a knife was found in the bed of the pickup. How it got there was never determined.
"Drop the knife," Moody ordered, and immediately began shooting, according to court records. He fired 13 rounds.
"The final shots were fired after (Duenez) had fallen to the ground," according to an order on cross-motions for summary judgment that U.S. District Judge
Duenez lay on the ground writhing in agony after Moody stopped shooting, court records show. Emergency medical personnel arrived seven minutes later, but it was too late to save him. Duenez was 35.
His wife, their son -- who was 17 days short of his first birthday when his father died -- and Duenez's parents sued, alleging civil rights violations and wrongful death. Named as defendants were the city, Moody and Police Chief
The incident was captured on a "dash-cam" video taken from Moody's police car, and that film was the most critical piece of evidence. Both sides claimed the video justified their respective positions.
Karlton ruled there were a number of factual issues that a jury would have to decide.
"The court finds that there is a genuine dispute about exactly what the video depicts," Karlton wrote in his 56-page order on the summary judgment motions. "Defendants say it depicts (Duenez) with a knife, plaintiffs say it depicts (him) with ... tweezers. The video is not fine enough to resolve that dispute.
"Defendants say (Duenez) kept reaching as if for a weapon, plaintiffs say (his) body was simply responding to being shot," the judge wrote. "The video does not resolve that dispute. Those are among the main facts that must be resolved to determine whether the shooting was a justified response to a dangerous parolee trying to throw a knife at a police officer, or the unjustified police killing of an unarmed man just trying to get out of a pickup truck."
That order was filed on
Karlton found the appeal to be "frivolous" and refused to wait for it to run its course at the
However, in a conference presided over by U.S. Magistrate Judge
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