“Mr. Walton pulled off the freeway, at which time our trooper had to – basically was forced into having to – make a traffic stop,” Cecil said.

Walton said he figured he had a broken taillight so he rolled down his window and waited. Cecil, on the other hand, said the trooper was ordering Walton to turn off the car. He then approached the vehicle on the passenger side with his gun drawn.

“Because he was alone and this was a high-risk situation, of course he had his gun drawn,” Cecil said. “He was getting no compliance and no response from Mr. Walton to his commands to shut off the vehicle.”

It was not immediately clear why the trooper did not wait for backup.

“We probably wouldn’t have wanted him to approach the vehicle like that, especially by himself, but he felt he needed to do it to expedite the matter, to resolve it as quickly as possible,” Cecil said.

Walton said the trooper tapped his gun on the rear passenger side window inches from where his daughter was sitting and yelled at him to roll down the front passenger window. DPS said what Walton heard was the trooper’s wedding ring, not a gun.

That’s where their stories really diverge.