State police SWAT officers responded to a remote Lane County farm more than six hours after a homicide there in December and then fatally shot a witness to the killing while looking for the suspect.
Family members of Tyler Holloway, the 26-year-old Army veteran who was killed by police on Dec. 27, filed notice Tuesday that they intend to sue the state police, Lane County and the city of Springfield.
They contend the police tactics and response were reckless.
“Law enforcement knew that Tyler was armed, that he was not the suspect and that he and the other victims — unaware of their presence — were fearful of the assailant returning,” the notice says.
“Nonetheless, they made the deliberate and blatantly unsound tactical decision to advance covertly on foot rather than announcing their presence from a position of safety,” the notice alleges.
Lane County District Attorney Christopher J. Parosa, who reviewed the police shooting, declined to prosecute the two state troopers and Lane County sheriff’s deputy who fired shots.
According to Parosa’s Feb. 25 memo, state police SWAT Sgt. Jamin VanMeter made the decision for six SWAT troopers and one Lane County sheriff’s special response team officer to do a “covert approach” on foot to the sprawling 100-acre Prindel Creek Farm because armored vehicles were more than an hour away.
As the officers approached the shop building where the homicide had occurred, one senior trooper hiding in the trees announced to others that he saw someone walk out of the shop with long hair, carrying some items, according to the memo.
He noted the person didn’t match the description of the homicide suspect but looked as if he was carrying a gun, the memo said.
The senior trooper, Dan Merritt, said he announced, “State police,” and commanded the person to “come to their location,” but the memo says heavy rainfall made it difficult to hear.
The person walking was startled, turned toward Merritt’s location, raised his hand and fired a shot, according to the district attorney.
Merritt, another trooper and the Lane County officer fired a total of 29 rounds back.
Holloway was killed by a single shot from a “high velocity round to the chest,” the district attorney’s memo said. Other shots hit a propane tank in the shop, which caused gas to leak and cloud the area.
Parosa declined in the memo to comment on the police tactics but found the officers’ shots were legally justified. He called Holloway’s death “a tragedy for all involved.”
“At the point Tyler Holloway turned and fired his pistol in Senior Trooper Merritt’s direction, likely assuming it was the at-large assailant, he inadvertently created a mortal threat to the life of Senior Trooper Merritt and the other officers on scene,” Parosa wrote.
The tort claim notice criticizes the state police SWAT approach to the property and argues that another farm resident had told police by phone that three witnesses to the homicide were waiting for them in the shop and that one of the men was armed with a gun.
State police Capt. Kyle Kennedy, agency spokesperson, declined comment due to the pending litigation.
Holloway and his friends, Amy Jewett and Christine Fuller, had called 911 at 10:58 p.m. on Dec. 26, after a shooting in the shop. They and others told police that the gunman had fled and later that the victim was dead inside the shop.
“These young people called 911 for help. Instead they were met six hours later with a tactical assault,’’ said Kevin Yolken, an attorney representing Holloway’s family.
Two of the three officers who fired shots wore body cameras, but they weren’t activated until well after the shooting, according to Yolken.
While Holloway, Fuller and Jewett waited for police to respond to the property in the Tidewater area off East Five Rivers Road, they hid in the shop with the body of the man killed, Chris “Bubba” Clark Jr.
They were joined briefly by another resident of the property, Dannie Jones, who also reported the shooting to police and provided detailed information about the victim and where the witnesses were waiting, according to the tort claim notice. Jones later returned to his own trailer on the farm property.
Oregon State Police, Springfield police and deputies from Lane County and Benton County sheriff’s departments responded to an area about a mile north of the farm and set up a command post.
About 12:30 a.m., the homicide victim’s father, Chris Clark Sr., who lived about three miles away, drove up to the police command post to speak with the officers after having gone to the farm shop where his son’s body was and where the witnesses remained, according to the notice.
The father offered to escort police to the shop, but police declined and instructed him to leave the area, according to the tort claim notice.
State police SWAT prepared a response over multiple hours and obtained information about the witnesses’ location and how to access the shop. They also were told Holloway had a gun, according to the tort claim notice.
At 5:35 a.m., Holloway left the shop in the dark to fill a water bottle as Jewett watched him.
Holloway was “completely unaware that a team of heavily armed SWAT officers had covertly approached in the darkness on foot and were surrounding the shop,” Yolken wrote in the notice.
“Moments later, chaos erupted and Tyler was shot dead in a hail of bullets from the darkness,” Yolken’s notice said.
The hail of bullets narrowly missed the two women waiting inside the shop, according to Yolken.
Merritt was not wearing a body camera and OSP SWAT Senior Trooper Brandon RatheLeGurche and Lane County Sheriff’s Deputy Taylor Trimboli were wearing body cameras but neither were activated, according to the district attorney’s memo. RatheLeGurche’s body cameras wasn’t activated “until well after Tyler had been killed,” according to the district attorney memo.
The body cameras have a “covert” setting that allows them to operate without light or sound, but the function wasn’t activated on either camera, the memo said.
“An unfamiliar, densely wooded, remote location, weather and technological limits on communications, largely unclear circumstances of the transactions between the people at the property, and a homicidal suspect whose whereabouts were unknown all contributed to this tragedy,” Parosa wrote in his memo.
Yolken and Holloway’s family argue in their legal notice that police should have announced their presence from a safe position instead of secretly walking up in the dark on foot.
“This reckless tactical choice is contrary to standard protocol and needlessly placed both the officers and the victims at risk of harm, escalating a call for help into a tragic and entirely preventable deadly encounter,” Yolken wrote in the notice.
VanMeter, who was a supervisor of the SWAT response, had been involved in a similar controversial fatal shooting by SWAT members of an 18-year-old man on rural property near Yachats in 2012 that included a covert, walk-up approach in a wooded area.
The family plans to sue the state police, City of Springfield and Lane County, alleging wrongful death, negligence and use of excessive force.
Jewett, Holloway’s girlfriend who was in the shop when he was fatally shot by police, said in a statement that Holloway “tried to protect us and make sure we were okay. He deserves justice for this loss at the hands of those who were supposed to serve and protect us.”
Jewett was three feet from Holloway. “All of a sudden, she heard gunfire. Tyler turned and he came running into the shop and fell to his face, just inside of the doorway,” Yolken said. “Bullets nearly struck the two women who were inside the shop.”
Hollway was a U.S. Army veteran from Vermont. After his military service, he came to Oregon and started working in commercial fishing. He had been living in a trailer on the farm in Lane County.
Yolken said the witnesses “are adamant there was no callout from law enforcement” announcing their presence, but believes that Halloway may have been startled by voices from their police radios.
“The officers created a situation where they startled him and the response was predictable. Tyler was in the middle of the forest and was completely caught by surprise,” Yolken told The Oregonian/OregonLive. “They should know that’s unsafe and unsound tactics.”
The accused gunman in the initial homicide, Everett Fuller, surrendered to police a day later.
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