14 year old boy shot by Police after chase

[TheeBadOne]

Teen was upset, off meds, lawyer says
By Lourdes Medrano and Alexis Huicochea

ARIZONA DAILY STAR

The boy who was shot by Tucson police after stealing a Caterpillar earthmover and leading police on a 12-mile chase Thursday may face multiple criminal charges, including aggravated assault and endangerment.

Assistant Police Chief Kermit Miller said the boy's identity is being withheld while a decision is made on the possible charges. The teen remained in critical condition late Friday at University Medical Center.

Miller said investigators on Friday still didn't know exactly how the boy had gained access to the "scraper" from a construction site on North Dodge Boulevard near East River Road. But he noted the teen may have been upset that his family was moving when he left home on a bicycle Thursday afternoon.

The boy's attorney, Gregory J. Kuykendall said Friday that the 14-year-old was upset when he learned his family would be leaving Tucson, the only place he has called home.

"He stole the earthmover because he is a very immature, hyperactive kid with poor judgment," Kuykendall said. "He acted impulsively and did not know what to do once he turned it on and got it out on to the street."

Kuykendall said the boy, whom he also declined to identify, suffers from behavioral problems, including attention deficit disorder, and was not on his medication when he took the machine from the work site.

"I am not trying to justify his actions," Kuykendall said. "I am just trying to explain that he was not on his medication, which is a problem, and he had a bad reaction to the notion of moving out of state."

While there has been some speculation on the boy's experience with such machinery, his attorney said he had never ridden an earthmover before the chase and never had any access to construction sites.

"It appeared the boy knew what he was doing because it is a complicated process to even turn that machinery on," said Sgt. Carlos Valdez, a Tucson Police Department spokesman. "After he turned it on, he had to lift the rear bucket because it is dropped when parked to prevent theft. The machine cannot move freely unless the bucket is lifted. This is not like a car, you don't just turn the key and go."

However, Kuykendall is less concerned with how or why the boy took the earthmover and is more worried about why the decision was made to use lethal force on a kid and "shoot to kill."

Assistant Police Chief Miller defended his officers' decision to shoot.

"They were concerned about the safety of those officers," he stressed.

The officers were identified as Brian Knight, a three-year member of the Tucson Police Department, and Brandon Angulo, who has been with the department six years. Both are on administrative leave, which is routine after a shooting.

The shooting occurred around 9 p.m. Thursday, when the boy came to the end of North Camino de Oeste near West Speedway and began to back up into at least 19 officers in vehicles to turn the scraper around, Valdez said.

He was hit twice, in the torso area, Kuykendall said.

The boy's foot then came off the accelerator and the scraper rolled back into the desert, coming to a stop, Valdez said.

"They thought he was going to go over the vehicles, with the officers in them," said Miller. "They felt threatened so they shot."

Kuykendall said the officers had other options, like using nonlethal force.

The bizarre chase began shortly after 8 p.m. near East Grant and North Swan roads, Miller said.

Tucson police responding to a report of a power outage in the area began to receive 911 calls about a child driving a large earthmover southbound on Swan near Grant.

The broken utility pole knocked out electricity to about 1,300 customers of Tucson Electric Power, said spokesman John Brown.

Several drivers reported to police that the mammoth earth-moving machine, whose tires towered over passing passenger cars, had forced them off the road as it erratically wound its way through city streets.

Miller gave this account:

The chase began with the boy heading westbound on Grant, ignoring police orders to stop.

Along the way, the 40-ton scraper sheared off a utility pole, causing a power outage, and narrowly missing a bicyclist. Meanwhile, the number of squad cars grew around the scraper and a police helicopter hovered above as the youth kept driving up to 30 mph, ignoring red lights.

As officers tried to figure out ways to stop the earthmover - including shooting at the tires to deflate them - they created a "safety envelope" around it to avoid any injuries to the public.

In the end, police decided it was less hazardous to continue the chase to a less populated area. From Grant, the boy drove to Camino de Oeste, then turned south into the Tucson Mountain foothills. The earthmover stopped briefly near West Speedway, and officers readied for a foot chase. But then he started backing up.

Then, over a PA system, officers directed him to stop the machine. At one point, the boy appeared to ask the officers "why?"

The boy's attorney said he probably could not hear the commands of the officers over the noise of the machine and if he could, he probably could not control the vehicle in the way they were telling him to.

The earthmover belongs to the Ashton Co. Inc., which recently started widening River Road from Campbell Avenue east to Dodge Boulevard, as well as working on an extension of Alvernon Way that includes construction of a new Rillito River bridge.

Twenty-year-old Chad Porteck, who drives an Ashton scraper similar to the stolen one, said operating the machine is complicated. His guess is that the boy had some experience.

"Obviously, he knew how to turn off the brake and pick up the can - the bottom part of the scraper that drags on the ground," Porteck said at the construction site Friday. "And he knew how to control it on the road, which is not easy."

Larry Withrow, a company spokesman, said an internal investigation was under way to determine exactly how the boy was able to drive the machine away from a riverbed.

While anyone can potentially walk onto a construction site and climb onto the machines, Withrow said, a key is needed to start the scraper.

Driving the heavy scraper isn't exactly easy, he said, so the youth "had to have some knowledge of the equipment."

Withrow said heavy equipment is rarely stolen from construction sites. Nonetheless, he said, the company would take additional safety precautions.

"We're very fortunate no one else was hurt," he added.

http://www.dailystar.com/dailystar/dailystar/78311.php
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Hit twice in the torso by handgun bullets and he's going to be okay. Wonder what they carry?
It's amazing it ended as well as it did. No way to stop a big thing like that. Shoot out the tires? With what, a howitzer?

[jonathon]

I can understand teh shots not being fatal if treated right away..

You know how easy it would be to steal one of those things? Just look at how lax contruction security is. I've seen the big stuff LEFT RUNNING before...

[locked'n'cocked]

sounds like more trigger happy cops to me

[jefnvk]

Sounds like the boy couldn't hear the cops, or decided not to listen to them, and came at them with whatever piece of equipment he had. I would think that that piece of equipment would probably kill anything it ran over. IMHO, the police were probably in the right.

Whatever happened with the hearing, he should have noticed there were many cop cars after him. No sympathy from me.

[FrankDrebin]

sounds like more trigger happy cops to me

Me too...I would have shot the earth mover in the tires and then waited a week for the air to run out and then shot pepper spray into the air intake. Then, I would have jumped on to the cab from a helicopter and subdued him with my baton without hurting his self-esteem.

[USP45usp]

Having being in the Constrution field for over 4 years, and being on and seeing a Scraper in action, that is one huge, heavy and surprisingly, fast machine.

The tires wouldn't have taken a week to deflat, but they are made of a very thick rubber and I don't anything besides a rifle shot could get through, and that is iffy also. Also, depending on how the shot goes in, it may miss the tube (yes, heavy machinary has the old timey tubes in them because at a cost of over $3000 for a new tire, it can be cut open and still used, just replace the tube).

If the kid had the ramp down, even if the person went down and survived the inital hit (there is enough room that if you laid down, it would run over you without harm), the ramp that "scrapes" the soil would have cut the heck outta a person, they would not survive and it would be, well, messy.

How easy is it to start them? Well, I have keys that will fit any Cat, any John Deere, any Case out there. You see, heavy equipment is not keyed like a car. You don't have hundreds of sets that are made for sets of vehicles. You have one main key and it works with all the equipment of same type and manufacturer.

Lets put some perspective on the "scraper":

The machine weighs about 100 tons or more (depending).

The machine "scrapes" spoil (that is the name of all types of soil conditions) down to 4 inches. Therefore, the engine has enough torque and speed to hit the spoil and scrape it up, deposit it into the bin (the back of the machine) and run for a good 1/4 mile or more before the engine loses power and you have to dump.

The machine, empty, can reach and exceed speeds of 75mph.

The tires on the machine are over 6' tall. And weigh about 1000+lbs by themselves, each. It has four in all.

The machine is "hinged" which means that it can make tight turns, very tight turns. So if you miss your target on the first run, you can get back to the target pretty quickly. Instead of thinking of just a dirt run as your target, think about the cops that were there...

Normally, I would be the first to think the cops were wrong until I learned more and then would probably still think the same. But knowing and being around heavy equipment, I know what that equipment is capable of doing.

And were the HELL were the parents in all this? If the kid was off his meds (why didn't they ensure that he took them), and depressed (hey, you can tell if a person is depressed, don't tell me that you can't) over the news of moving, why didn't the parents either call up the shrink, the hospital, or someone before they (yes THEY) allowed this to happen?

Wayne

[TheeBadOne]

Originally posted by locked'n'cocked:
sounds like more trigger happy cops to me

[Webleywielder]

Add Iraq booty RPGs to squadcar trunks .

If you point a deadly weapon (how many foot pounds of muzzle energy does one of those trucks have?) at me and mine I'm going to shoot to kill. Its the only way I was ever taught to shoot. The Cops did the right thing, however inefficiently.

"In a world devoid of semiautomatics, a properly set-up Webley is the ultimate full-size self-defense handgun." Unless you need an RPG

[dev_null]

The other news feed I read (Fox, maybe?) said they fired when the kid started coming straight at their roadblock with the equipment. I started to say something sarcastic about it being easier to shoot than get out of the cars, but in their shoes I might figure that if he's willing to come at me sitting in a squadcar then he's probably also a menace to the public at that point. And simply shooting at the tires isn't going to stop him. Once he begins an assault with the likelihood of committing murder (or at least manslaughter), then it's time for "whatever works." And since we don't yet have that LePage 155mm glue gun that Yossarian spoke of, or the Monty Python 16 Ton weight from the sky, you have to make a quick decision to use what you've got at your disposal at that point. It's all very easy to armchair commando this, but I'm curious what options the "sounds like trigger-happy cops" folks would suggest they had?

- 0 -

[jefnvk]

And simply shooting at the tires isn't going to stop him.

I would agree. I would really think that strategy through. A handgun versus the big, thick tires needed to support that tractor, coupled with the fact that lots of vehicles of that sort run low air pressure? Doubt anything this side of a rifle would have done anything but bounce off the tires.

[CarbineCaleb]

Well, it does seem tragic that this was the result... and maybe they could have done something besides basically following him for who knows how long before he got to the "turning around" part (like shoot tires with a shotgun?).... but once you are pulled in right behind him, and he has been behaving erraticly to say the least, and is backing up a very large and powerful vehicle that can run over you *and* your cars... 14 or not, he was recklessly endangering the lives of others, and would not even stop when confronted. It might not be the ideal outcome, but I don't think the officers were wrong to shoot to stop him.

[FrankDrebin]

... and maybe they could have done something besides basically following him for who knows how long before he got to the "turning around" part

When you're the one making the call to shoot someone, "maybe" isn't allowed. And with all this hindsight, the people saying "maybe" now should be able to make a lot more concrete committment than what they MAYBE should have done.

[CarbineCaleb]

Frank - this *is* a discussion forum, isn't it? And why does it bother you for everyone else to comment on this with their "hindsight", yet you feel free to give your opinion on the same past event, that you also were not present at? Isn't that hindsight too, Frank?

[Long Path]

I worked an accident once between a Cat version of one of these and an F250 pickup. I was AMAZED at how the pickup was utterly totaled (almost beyond recognition), while the Cat only needed the ladder step bent back out again. The driver of the earthmover, who had been hauling across a road, said that the brakes were utterly inadequate to stop it when he was hauling 80 to 100k lbs of dirt at high speed. He said that the only real way to stop in a hurry was to drop the blade. (His flagman was, um, not assisting.)

The tires are huge. HUGE. The only way I would be sure of getting them to deflate would be sabot slugs. I've seen pistol bullets hit midsized auto tires again and again at lower speeds, and you'd be amazed at how long it takes for the tire to deflate even on a tubeless passenger car tire. In a tire that has more volume than a small automobile, I can definitely see it taking half an hour or more to deflate. This isn't a good answer during an emergency.

To the critics here, I've got to ask-- just what pre-planned response would YOU have ready? Because I'm sitting at home, sipping on a cold soft drink, relaxing in my living room, and have read this report, and have to admit that I'm not altogether sure what they should have done better.

Ask yourself this: if the kid was pointing a pistol at a person and was clearly going to use it, would you feel that shooting him would have been okay? (I'm guessing "Yes.")


What if the kid couldn't hear the cops shouting "Don't shoot! Stop pointing that gun at him! Put down the weapon!"?? Should the kid still be shot when he's presenting an immediate threat? (Sadly, I'm still thinking "Yes.")

Now, doesn't a huge, tanklike earthmover traveling at 30mph, knocking down electrical utility poles, fleeing the police, endangering bicyclists, and failing to comply with stop commands present an immediate threat? Especially when it runs at occupied police cars?

Does it make a difference that it was a kid driving? If so, why?
If it does, do you think it would be easy to determine the driver's age in such a circumstance? Think angles, here. Reflections. Dusty windows.

[FrankDrebin]

Frank - this *is* a discussion forum, isn't it? And why does it bother you for everyone else to comment on this with their "hindsight", yet you feel free to give your opinion on the same past event, that you also were not present at? Isn't that hindsight too, Frank?

I was kidding about jumping out of the helicopter. It doesn't bother me at all when other people second guess the cops that were there. I was just pointing out that with hindsight, I thought people should do better than "maybe". I've always subscribed to the "all's well that ends well" school of police shootings. That is: If it was a legal shooting and if no one besides the bad guy was hurt, it was a perfect shooting.

I've seen pistol bullets hit midsized auto tires again and again at lower speeds, and you'd be amazed at how long it takes for the tire to deflate even on a tubeless passenger car tire.

Amen.

[USP45usp]

Long,

****, that is what I said in my long output of breath in my post.

Geez, finally side with the cops and no one takes account of what you said.

Go figure.

Wayne

[Long Path]

Hey Wayne--

who said I was arguing with you, friend?!? Seriously.

Heh.

[JohnKSa]

Actions have consequences.

[rugerdude]

I think the cops did good. The immediate threat was stopped before innocents were hurt/killed, and they only fired when they were threatened. I'm 15 years old and I don't understand why, if I presented an immediate threat to innocents and was wounded/killed by police people would curse the police even if an adult did the same thing they would say good job. Have I not commited the same crime?
IMHO concern no.1 should be that no innocents are hurt or killed, the criminal chose to do what he did and should be prepared for the consequences. Regardless of age, he was a threat.

[jonathon]

I do feel this shooting was justified.

Why?

Imagine what would have happened had he driven into a residential area, or a high traffic area... that thing would be more destructive than the take that got loose in LA.

[Craigar45]

Yes, I would agree that they acted correctly. Most people look at heavy equipment and dont realize just how HEAVY it is- that aint sheet metal! All of that equipment is made from 1/4"-1/2" steel plate! If someone were driving that thing around like that kid was, I would have shot too- I am surprised they didnt disable the threat sooner! As Long Path was saying about the damage machinery can inflict- I operate an excavator, so I have a pretty good idea of what it can do. I saw a guy side-swipe a house on accident once. Took out a whole room, and totaled about $65,000 all in less than two seconds. Guns have such little danger compared with what I work with eight hours a day, it is not even funny.

[willsjeep]

I say yes the cops were justified in doing what they did.
You have something that big and heavy under the control of someone who has already shown a willingness to use it to cause harm, what else could they do? Those type of tires are MADE to resist punctures from all manner of debris, the drivetrain is designed to haul extremely heavy loads all day, every day, the body/frame is designed to last years under extremely heavy abuse that these type jobs dish out. A few police in cruisers are not going to stop it without making the DRIVER stop it.
What if, instead of a earthmover, he was in the same emotional state, with earphones ( so cannot hearon, running down the road shooting at anything he came close to and ignoreing the police?
Will

[gudel]

damn good riddance. was it a one shot stop?

[mfree]

"The machine, empty, can reach and exceed speeds of 75mph. "

......

Oh, sorry, daydreaming a bit there Something about a ramp in the desert and an empty scraper...

[Spotted Owl]

Why did the officers stay sitting in the 19 cars directly behind the scraper? Perhaps they should have gotten out and then they wouldn't have been at risk. Some of them must have been out of their cars if they were shooting the the kid, why not the rest?