Divided Seattle inquest jury concludes 2018 police killing justified

A divided King County inquest jury concluded a Seattle police officer was justified when he shot Iosia Faletogo in the back of the head following a 2018 foot chase and struggle with officers, but two of the six jurors questioned its legality and said Faletogo died “by criminal means.”

The result “casts doubt” on how police justified the shooting, a family attorney said.

The findings will be referred to the King County Prosecuting Attorney’s Office. The office’s public integrity team will review the case to determine whether it should reconsider a decision, issued in October, not to file criminal charges against Seattle police Officer Jared Keller in Faletogo’s death.

Senior Deputy Prosecuting Attorney Joseph Marchesano, who reviews police-involved deaths for the Prosecuting Attorney’s Office and is the author of the October report, said in an email Tuesday he will review the findings and comments made by inquest jurors as they answered more than 80 factual questions arising from Faletogo’s death on New Year’s Eve 2018.

“If there is information in there that could affect our analysis or desire for additional investigation, we can act upon that,” he said.

Faletogo, 36, was in a car stopped by police on Aurora Avenue North in North Seattle at about 5 p.m. on Dec. 31, 2018. Faletogo ran from the vehicle and sprinted across the busy street, chased by six police officers, who tackled him and piled on. Graphic body camera video showed Faletogo had a handgun at one point, which police later said was stolen.

Overall, the six-member inquest jury concluded Faletogo was armed with a handgun, ran from police after a traffic stop and ended up in a life-or-death struggle with six officers, including Keller, who was the only one to fire a weapon.

The inquest jury unanimously concluded Keller never saw the gun in Faletogo’s hand after he was tackled and that the gun came out of his hand during the struggle. The jurors agreed Keller believed Faletogo was reaching for a weapon and would shoot the officers if he got it.

The shooting raised questions when body camera video recorded Faletogo saying “Nope! Not reaching!” in response to officers’ repeated commands to “Stop reaching!” for a handgun he had dropped during the fight.

The jurors concluded Keller did not hear Faletogo say that.

Just 0.14 of a second elapsed between Faletogo’s statement and the gunshot, according to inquest testimony and the Prosecuting Attorney’s Office’s investigation.

Marchesano, in his analysis of Faletogo’s shooting, said Faletogo was likely in the process of surrendering to officers when he was shot and that the law gives officers the benefit of the doubt, as they often make split-second, life-or-death decisions “under tense, uncertain, and rapidly evolving circumstances.”

After 10 days of testimony, the inquest jury deliberated for more than two days. King County convenes an inquest jury to review all police-involved deaths, asking six jurors to answer a series of factual questions about the circumstances, including whether the involved officers complied with state law and department policy, and whether the death resulted from “criminal means.”

The jury questioned whether Keller complied with the Police Department’s de-escalation policies — one voted yes, four said “unknown” and one did not answer. On whether Keller complied with the city’s “use-of-force principles,” broad guidelines on the application of the department’s use of force policies, they were split, with three voting “yes” and three “unknown.”

Mohammad Hamoudi, aSeattle attorney representing Faletogo’s family at the inquest, said the divided jury “casts doubt on the justification for the use of force presented by the six police officers involved, including Officer Keller” as well as two expert witnesses called to testify, one of whom was a Seattle police sergeant.

Hamoudi said the family’s expert, a former trainer at the state’s Basic Law Enforcement Academy, was not allowed to offer his opinion about the legality of the traffic stop that preceded the shooting.

“This omission raises questions about the completeness of the inquest and whether this perspective could have influenced more jurors to view the killing as criminal,” he said. “The fact that a third of the jury viewed the incident as criminal cannot be ignored.”

The city of Seattle has already settled a lawsuit filed by Faletogo’s family for $515,000.

While all six jurors concluded Keller acted in good faith when he shot Faletogo, two of the six jurors said the shooting was not justified under the law and that Keller caused Faletogo’s death by “criminal means.”

“The ‘system’ (trains) and produces policies that gives officers no other option than to remove the threat by deadly force,” one juror wrote in comments affixed to the list of 86 “interrogatories” the panel answered.

Another comment, in different script, suggested a “continual assessment” of the threat “should have been occurring,” noting that Faletogo had dropped his gun and was outnumbered six to one when Keller tried to fire into Faletogo once, but that his weapon jammed. Testimony and body camera video show he cleared the weapon and fired again into the back of Faletogo’s head.

The point when Keller paused to addressed the issue with his firearm, he should have paused to assess the situation. If he had, the juror wrote, he would have seen that the “level of resistance had decreased,” that Faletogo had dropped the gun and was saying “Not reaching!” when he was shot.

“Based on this, I do not believe lethal force was necessary at that moment,” the juror wrote.