Thursday 28th March 2024

hannah-fizer

On August 4, a special prosecutor was assigned to an officer-involved shooting incident that resulted in the death of a 25-year-old woman in Pettis County on June 13.

A release from Pettis County Prosecuting Attorney Phillip Sawyer says the Missouri State Highway Patrol’s Division of Drug and Crime Control (DDCC) supplied all reports currently within its control and the completion of its investigation into the fatal shooting of Hannah Fizer to his office on July 30.

After evaluation, special prosecutor Stephen Sokoloff, General Counsel for the Missouri Office of Prosecution Services, was appointed to this matter.

The original report says Fizer was pulled over for speeding and Careless and Imprudent Driving and she had threatened the Pettis County deputy during the traffic stop before she was shot. After a search warrant was obtained and executed on the vehicle, it was discovered that there was no weapon located inside.

In a review sent to Associate Circuit Judge Jeff Mittelhauser, Sokoloff says: “There are aspects of the case that lead me to believe that an alternative approach might have avoided the confrontation that led to the officer having to discharge his weapon, but that is not relevant to the determination of whether criminal liability would attach. That determination is made somewhat more difficult by the absence of a body-worn camera with audio, as the video from the adjacent security system, although good quality for such a system, especially at night, is not totally clear.”

Sokoloff says that required investigators to try to coordinate the time between the dispatch audio with the video to provide a more complete information package.

Sokoloff’s finding continued: “All of the information is internally consistent, and leads to the conclusion that the shooting, albeit possibly avoidable, was justifiable under Missouri criminal law. The evidence indicates that the deceased, who had been stopped for multiple traffic violations and had refused to provide any information to the officer, had advised him that she was recording him, and then shortly thereafter, that she had a gun and was going to shoot him. At the time the officer discharged his weapon, she had reached down into the floorboard of the car and raised up towards him. Based on the evidence and circumstances available to the officer during the event, it cannot be said that the officer did not have reasonable belief that he was in danger of serious physical injury or death from the actions of the deceased at the time he fired.”

Sokoloff says “In Missouri, where an officer is in a position of using deadly force in self-defense, the standard requires a reasonable belief that he (the officer) is in imminent danger of serious physical injury or death, as a result of actions of the suspect. The reasonableness of the officer’s belief must be evaluated based on how circumstances reasonably appeared to the officer at the time, not based on how those circumstances may have later been discovered actually to have been.”

Further in the letter, Sokoloff says “In surveillance video footage, the deceased can be seen moving around in the vehicle vigorously and bending down. She can be heard during the officer’s radio dispatch yelling at him, and he repeats her threat that she had a gun and is going to shoot him to dispatch prior to him discharging his weapon. Just prior to the time the officer fired his weapon, the deceased appears to be raising up from a bent-over position. The deputy advised that she was still reaching down, and he can be seen trying to force open the driver’s door, then takes a couple of steps towards the front of the vehicle, assuming a defensive stance just forward of the driver’s door. At the time of discharge, the deceased cannot be seen, due to the officer’s position. All of this would support the officer’s claim that he was in fear for his safety.”

Sokoloff concludes: “After a through review of the available information, I believe it would be difficult to find from this evidence that the officer did not have a reasonable apprehension of immediate physical injury or death from the acts of the suspect. As a result, it is my conclusion that there is sufficient evidence which a jury would be likely to find that the officer was justified in his use of deadly force. I believe, based on the current state of the law, and the provisions of the National Prosecution Standards, which hold that a prosecutor must have a reasonable basis to believe that a conviction (beyond a reasonable doubt) is reasonably likely, that he or she is ethically obligated not to file charges, that there would not be a reasonable likelihood of being able to prove the elements of the offense beyond a reasonable doubt, that no charges are warranted.”