KALAMAZOO (WKZO AM/FM) — The Kalamazoo County Prosecutor has determined that the actions of four police officers involved in the shooting death of David Teneyuque were justified, given the circumstances they faced at the time.
He released his finding at a news conference held in his offices downtown, complete with video and a Power Point presentation detailing the incident, which took place on April 18th.
The plan executed by Metro SWAT, to use non-lethal bean bags and a K-9 to disorient, disable and subdue the suspect failed to play out as they had hoped, and ended in Teneyuque’s death.
Teneyuque and his girlfriend were squatting in a van parked in one of the driveways at the Pavilion Estates Mobile Home Park and residents had begun to complain, especially since there was evidence the couple were using drugs and had guns.
But the guns he owned turned out to be pellet guns. Something police did not know when the confrontation began.
The first officers on the scene claim they heard Teneyuque rack a pistol inside the van, when they said he was going to have to leave the area. That was when they retreated and called for reinforcements.
The officers and a SWAT negotiator had tried for an hour to get Taneyuque to drop his guns and surrender, but he remained belligerent, and hostile, daring them to shoot him, angrily insisting that he was not going to go back to jail.
Prosecutor Jeff Getting says when they interviewed his girlfriend; she said he had been talking about “suicide by cop”. He was an ex-con who had had confrontations with police before and had meth and other drugs in his system.
The SWAT officers developed a plan to draw him out into the open with a water bottle and then use non-lethal force, small bean bags fired from a shotgun to knock him off balance and a K-9 to subdue him.
But Sheriff Rick Fuller thinks the first beanbag missed, and the second failed to disorient him, and in the split seconds that followed, Teneyuque lifted what appeared to be a 9mm semi-automatic to firing position.
Four officers opened fire with assault rifles, firing 15 rounds and hitting him with 9 of the bullets. It all happened in the blink of an eye.
Prosecutor Getting cited that spontaneous and unified response as proof that it wasn’t just one officer who thought their lives were in danger. Getting had access to several videos of the incident, some from dashcams and some from private phones.
You can hear several officers express their sharp disappointment that things had gone wrong, using language we can’t play on the radio. Lifesaving efforts began immediately on Taneyuque who was loaded into an ambulance. He did not make it to the hospital.
The officers involved are now free to return to active duty, if they have not already. All of them have had access to counselors to help them deal with their participation in the death.
Prosecutor Getting opened the news conference by offering his condolences to Teneyuque’s family.
