Solano County District Attorney Donald A. du Bain said Friday his office wouldn’t be prosecuting Vallejo police Officer Sean Kenney in connection with the shooting of Anton Barrett.
“Based on the totality of the facts and circumstances as presented, and corroborated by other witnesses and on an examination of both the physical evidence and the scene, I conclude that Officer Kenney fired his weapon because he actually and reasonably believed he and others present at the seen were in imminent danger of being shot,” Deputy District Attorney Jeffrey C. Kauffman wrote in a letter to Vallejo police Chief Joseph Kreins.
Barrett died May 28, 2012, in an incident that began shortly after midnight, when officers Jared Jaksch and Jeff Tai were patrolling Sonoma Boulevard and Tennessee Street in Vallejo, Kauffman’s letter said.
Jaksch saw a white Lexus SC400 with its lights off leave a Nation’s restaurant parking lot. The officer followed the car, which sped up and ran a red light after turning onto Sacramento Street, he wrote.
The officer turned on his lights and sirens and pursued the vehicle as it made several turns, hit a curb, ran a stop sign and went the wrong way on a one-way street before stopping at an apartment complex in what Kauffman described as “a poorly lit dead-end.”
The occupants left the car and ran, ignoring officers’ orders to stop, he wrote.
Officer Dustin Joseph, accompanied by Kenney, had joined the pursuit and had followed the car until it stopped. They also began searching for the car’s former occupants, two of whom were identified as Anton Barrett, the driver, and his son, Anton Barrett Jr., who had been a passenger in the front seat, Kauffman wrote.
During the search, Kenney heard a popping sound before he and the driver, the older of the two, came face to face in a space between apartment buildings, Kauffman wrote.
The man advanced on the officer and made a movement with his hand Kenney perceived as a reach for a weapon, Kauffman’s letter said.
The man pulled an object from his clothing and grasped it as if it were a handgun, and Kenney fired five times, Kauffman wrote. The officer later reported he had feared for his life and that of his partner, the district attorney wrote. The object the man held later was described as a metal wallet.
When Barrett tried to get up after falling to the ground, Tai fired a taser at him so Joseph could handcuff him, Kauffman wrote. The officers also provided medical assistance, he wrote, and the man was taken to John Muir Medical Center, Walnut Creek, where he died.
Among those testifying were Anton Barrett Jr., who, according to Kauffman, said he and his father had been driving around and drinking with a friend he called Gas, who had been the back seat passenger and who had supplied the driver with marijuana while all three began drinking liquor shots before they left the restaurant parking lot.
The man he called Gas has not been identified or found, Kauffman wrote.
Other witnesses described hearing popping sounds and heard officers ordering someone to stop.
“It is my conclusion that Ofc. Kenney had probable cause to believe that Mr. Barrett posed an immediate threat of serious harm to Ofc. Kenney and to the other officers and civilians in the area where this incident occurred,” Kauffman wrote.
He explained that while it was impossible to know why the man ignored officers’ commands, the man was a felon on probation who had been driving recklessly while under the influence of alcohol with more than twice the legal limit in his blood system.
Kaufmann wrote that “it is well documented” that large quantities of alcohol impairs judgement.
“The events as they unfolded on May 28, 2012, posed an awful dilemma for the officers in this case,” he wrote.
“No one sought the tragic result that occurred.”
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