Letting cuffed man escape was first mistake, expert says
Kootenai County deputies will have to answer why they blindly shot through a wall during a shootout Dec. 28 that killed a suspect and seriously injured a Coeur d’Alene police officer, according to a national expert on officer-involved shootings.
Geoffrey Alpert, a criminologist at the University of South Carolina who has spent 20 years studying police use of force, made his comments last week based on information previously reported about the shooting at 1332 Starling Court that killed 39-year-old suspect Michael Madonna and seriously injured Coeur d’Alene police officer Michael Kralicek.
According to police reports and eyewitness accounts, Madonna was handcuffed but fled into his Hayden home and grabbed a loaded handgun. He fired twice. Kootenai County deputies Justin Bangs and Kevin Smart returned fire and shot more than 20 times. Many of those bullets went through a wall that separates the garage and living areas of the home.
One of those shots hit a blind dog in the house, killing it, officials said in previous interviews.
“They handcuffed (Madonna) appropriately, and then they made some mistakes,” Alpert said of Bangs and Smart. “You don’t fire without target acquisition. That’s the first rule.”
Chris Schnell, 22, was a good friend of Madonna’s and often spent evenings at his house. Schnell said he visited Madonna’s house after the shooting and saw where investigators had used gray tape to mark more than 30 bullet holes inside the home. Schnell said it appears some bullets left more than one hole.
Investigators used letters to mark each hole, cycling through the entire alphabet before ending on double J, he said. Bullets hit two refrigerators and a parked car in the garage, Schnell said.
“You can totally tell that they just opened fire,” Schnell said. “They were praying and spraying.”
Asked why his deputies would fire through a wall, Kootenai County Sheriff Rocky Watson said: “I know the total details. The officers were justified, and I’m not going to make any comment beyond that.”
Alpert, however, said Bangs and Smart shouldn’t have fired at Madonna if he was hidden behind a wall.
“That’s the big issue,” Alpert said. “You don’t know who else is behind the wall. There could be innocent bystanders.
“Deadly force is definitely justified. They just didn’t use it properly.”
The criminal investigation into the shooting was handed over Friday by the Idaho State Police to Kootenai County Prosecutor Bill Douglas, who will decide if any laws were broken by Bangs or Smart when they fired 26 times at Madonna.
Douglas could not be reached Friday to say how long that review will take.
ISP Capt. Clark Rollins also said he couldn’t comment about the case. But he said that any inquiries prior to the completion of Douglas’ review would cause nothing but problems.
“I’m hearing rumors right now that are unbelievable,” Rollins said. “I’m biting my tongue. A lot of people are making speculation without knowing the facts. They do citizens a disservice. Nobody is trying to hide the ball here. Please be patient. Allow us to present the facts to the prosecutor and let him make the call.”
According to previous police reports and interviews and information obtained from a law enforcement source who spoke only on condition of anonymity, the incident began at about 9 p.m. Dec. 27 when Madonna allegedly stole two beer kegs from a distributor near the Coeur d’Alene police station. Two employees witnessed the theft and chased the suspect to the Grouse Meadows subdivision in Hayden.
A police officer, believed to be Kralicek, saw the employees racing up Ramsey Road and followed them.
Neighbors said they heard Madonna’s pickup making a screeching noise as it approached his house at 1332 Starling Court. They saw Madonna run into the house without turning on the lights. Then the two employees and a police car arrived, neighbors said.
Sheriff’s spokesman Capt. Ben Wolfinger said in a previous interview that the city officer knocked on the door but got no answer. He and the two other men left after inspecting items in the back of Madonna’s pickup, which was damaged when it had struck the brick entrance to Grouse Meadows.
Three hours later, deputies Bangs and Smart arrived to investigate the hit-and-run accident that had damaged the Grouse Meadows entrance. They discovered that the hood of Madonna’s truck was warm, and they ran his license plate through computer records.They learned that Kralicek had been investigating the theft of the beer kegs, and he was called to the scene.
Sometime after the two deputies and Kralicek arrived, Madonna and his girlfriend came out of the house. It’s not clear what happened during those conversations except that one of the deputies handcuffed Madonna in his garage, according to a source who asked not to be identified.
Madonna, still handcuffed, rushed into his house, grabbed a .357-caliber handgun and fired twice while still restrained.
Kralicek was hit in the jaw and never fired a round from his service pistol. Bangs and Smart fired 26 times and hit Madonna three times, according to the unnamed law enforcement source.
Alpert, who has helped train officers and develop policies for law enforcement departments in Canada, England, France and the United States, said the deputy who handcuffed Madonna made the first mistake by allowing him to escape.
“That is bad procedure. You don’t leave a suspect alone,” Alpert said. “Once you have him under control, you don’t let him loose to get a gun.”
However, once Madonna had fled into the house, the deputies had justification to follow him into the home.
“He was under arrest and he fled, so he was fair game for them to go after him,” Alpert said. “Then he goes and gets a gun. Once he starts firing at the cops, then it becomes a real serious deal, and they are justified in using deadly force.”
However, if Madonna retreated into the home and no longer could be seen, the deputies should not have continued firing through the wall, Alpert said.
“It’s not smart to go searching a house with someone popping shots at you,” he said. “For their own safety, they need to back off and start again. That’s when you turn the electricity off, the water off and starve them out.”
Schnell, Madonna’s friend, said he saw bullet holes in the floor, ceiling and most walls. “Usually, there were a lot of people hanging out over there. If I would have been sitting in the house on the couch or something, there is no way I could have got out in time.”
Officials have not said whether Bangs or Smart knew that 11 days prior to the shooting, Madonna had attempted to grab an officer’s gun out of his holster. But Kralicek should have known because, according to court records, he helped interview witnesses after that incident.
On Dec. 17, Madonna was arrested on suspicion of driving under the influence. During the ride to jail, he slipped his legs through his handcuffed hands and pushed through the slider that separated him from officer Alan Winstead in the front seat, according to court records. Madonna was charged with attempting to take Winstead’s gun.
Bangs, 26, was hired full time on May 4, 2002, Watson said. The sheriff said he didn’t know the hire date for Smart, who is assigned to patrol Hayden.
The Madonna shooting was the second officer-involved shooting in six months for Bangs. Douglas, the prosecutor, cleared Bangs in the first incident in which he shot and killed a knife-wielding suspect in Rathdrum on June 18.
In that incident, 33-year-old Frank Saucedo Jr. was drunk and threatening to hurt both himself and officers after his girlfriend had ended their relationship the previous night, authorities said. Rathdrum police officers responded at about 1 a.m. and watched the knife-wielding Saucedo yell expletives and make threats for several minutes.
The Rathdrum officers called for backup, and Bangs and several other deputies responded. As soon as they arrived, Saucedo rushed the officers in a confrontation that lasted 18 seconds, according to a video of the shooting obtained by The Spokesman-Review.
Saucedo jogged toward the officers and refused multiple orders to drop his knife and get down on the ground. As Saucedo approached, deputy Art Dollard shot him with a shotgun beanbag round, which is a bag full of pellets. It’s called “less-than lethal” because it is designed to force suspects to comply without killing them.
However, Saucedo simply flinched from the direct hit from the beanbag and continued to move directly at Dollard. He fired a second beanbag round, again hitting Saucedo with no effect.
Bangs was standing behind Dollard, aiming a Ruger .223-caliber rifle as a backup. Bangs said in court records that he knew Dollard had only three beanbag rounds and he thought Saucedo “was going to do harm to deputy Dollard.”
In his last words, Saucedo yelled, “I’m Lucifer,” before lunging sideways at Dollard and Bangs, according to the audio and video that was recorded by a camera inside a Rathdrum police car.
Dollard fired his last beanbag as Bangs fired two shots from his rifle from about 10 feet, hitting Saucedo in the upper left shoulder and lower left back. Both bullets ended up in Saucedo’s chest. One of the bullets severed Saucedo’s aorta, according to the autopsy report.
Only after Saucedo had crumpled to the ground did he drop the knife with a 4-inch serrated blade.
Alpert, an author of more than 15 books who received his doctorate from Washington State University, said he agrees with Watson, Douglas and the ISP that Bangs’ actions in the Saucedo shooting followed procedure.
“It sounds like they did what they should have with the beanbags and it didn’t work,” Alpert said. “When you get that close with a knife, deadly force is, certainly is, justified.”
Alpert also said the Saucedo shooting should have no bearing on the Dec. 28 shootout with Madonna other than to possibly make Bangs more hesitant to use deadly force.
“Most officers don’t fire their weapons in the line of duty in their careers,” Alpert said. “But that doesn’t mean you won’t have two or three in a row. You can’t fault (Bangs) for being in the wrong place at the wrong time.
“These are two independent events. You can’t lump them together, although someone will try.”