Police blame 'poor lighting' after they shoot dead innocent grandfather, 72, while searching the WRONG home for burglar

Jerry Waller was shot dead in his garage



The home they were supposed to search was across the street

Both cops involved have been with the Fort Worth Police Department for less than one year

Police shot and killed a 72-year-old man while searching the wrong home.



Fort Worth, TX., police have blamed poor lighting after responding May 28 to a burglary alarm, searching the wrong home and shooting dead beloved husband Jerry Waller, according to an affidavit. The city of Fort Worth has had more than one incident involving misidentified homes this year, the second resulted in the wrong house being bulldozed.



Mr. Waller’s home is across the street from the home the police should have been responding to, according to reports.

Loving husband: Jerry Waller, 72, pictured with wife Kathy, was shot and killed May 28 by Fort Worth Police investigating a robbery at the wrong home

‘Due to poor lighting conditions, and officers attempting to arrive on the scene undetected, [officers] inadvertently began searching 404 Havenwood Lane, directly across the street from 409 Havenwood Lane,’ according to an affidavit.



The lack of lighting in the neighborhood confused officers B.B Hanlon and Arpie Hoeppner, both in their first year with the department.

‘There is no lighting around the home and the officers had only the use of their flashlights, they encountered a subject who was armed with a handgun standing near the corner of the home,’ the affidavit continued.’



What happened next was heard via police radio transmissions obtained by NBC DFW .

A family devastated: Waller was shot by Fort Worth police as they searched his home for burglars in the dark using only flashlights



‘The guy came out with a gun and wouldn’t put the gun down,’ Officer Hanlon said. ‘He pointed it at [Officer] Hoeppner, Hoeppner fired [his gun],’ the officer added.



Both officers assert they identified themselves as police and asked Waller to put his gun down. Waller instead pointed his firearm at the officers, causing them to fire in self-defense, killing him in his garage.



‘We were disturbed by suggestions that the police may have felt threatened by a man in his own garage faced with unknown trespassers yielding flashlights,’ Waller’s daughter Angie told media the following day. Waller’s widow Kathy told NBC DFW she was ‘disgusted’ and called the rookie cops ‘trigger happy,’

Right home: This is the house that cops should have been searching

Wrong home: Waller's home, pictured here, is across the street from the home police should have searched

Mr. Waller grabbed his handgun after seeing lights outside their bedroom, she heard yelling immediately before her husband was shot dead in their garage, she added.

Only a few weeks after this incident, on July 12, the city of Fort Worth demolished the wrong home, according to local reports. Sent to demolish a crumbling lakefront home, sub-contractors hired by the city instead demolished an antique-filled, treasured lake house handed down through generations of a family while the dilapidated home next door continued to fall apart in plain sight.

Nothing left: This concrete slab used to be a treasured family lake house - until the city of Fort Worth demolished it by accident

The homeowner found out when he pulled up to the home on his way to a charity event and saw nothing except for a concrete slab – everything was gone, he told CBS DFW .

