An elderly man who was shot five times by Indio police last summer was aggressively approaching two officers, threatening to “stick” a cop with a pair of scissors and challenging him to pull his gun and shoot him.

But the man, Pedro Montanez, was also 71 years old, only 5’4”, 130 pounds and suffered from a long history of mental health issues, according to a shooting investigation summary by the Riverside County District Attorney’s Office. Three of Montanez’s family members told investigators that he was plagued by hallucinations, which he sometimes would attack with a knife.

The DA’s summary, obtained exclusively by The Desert Sun through a public records request, was sent to Indio Police Chief Michael Washburn earlier this month to explain why prosecutors deemed the Montanez shooting was justified.

But the letter also raises new questions about if Indio police could have stopped Montanez without killing him. For example, one officer, Kevin Fowler, had his baton ready to strike Montanez in the moment that another cop, Chris Cordova, pulled the trigger.

“Mr. Cordova acted unreasonably under the circumstances,” said Attorney Arnoldo Casillas, who represents Montanez's family in a wrongful death lawsuit against the city. “This was very slight, very old and seriously mentally ill man that posed no real threat to him.”

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The shooting investigation summarized in the DA’s letter included interviews with both officers, at least five witnesses and three members of Montanez’s family. Officials also reviewed four sources of video evidence – two body cameras, one witness video and surveillance footage from a nearby store. The most important evidence appears to be the body cam footage, which has not been made public but is summarized in the DA's documents.

The events of the shooting began at about 9 p.m. on August 20, 2016, when police received a report that a man with a knife was threatening a woman and her family at the Rancho Fresco Carniceria on Jackson Street.

The first officer on the scene was Fowler, who had been with Indio police for about two years. He recognized Montanez in an instant. The old man was known within the department as “combative,” the DA’s letter states. Fowler had even arrested Montanez just one night prior for allegedly assaulting a gardener.

This time, Montanez was holding a pair of scissors.

MORE:The cops thought he was a gunman. He thought they were robbers. They met at his doorstep, guns drawn.

According to the DA’s summary, footage from Fowler’s body camera shows the cop meeting Montanez in the parking lot, appearing “agitated,” then moving towards the cop in an “aggressive manner.” Fowler holds his flashlight in one hand and his Taser in the other, shouting for Montanez to drop his weapon. The old man taunts him.

“Come here, come here, take your gun out, take your gun out (expletive),” Montanez yells in Spanish, according to the DA's summary. “I’m going to stick you … take it out. Take out your gun. Shoot me, (expletive).”

Fowler fires his Taser, striking Montanez with the metal barbs, which appear to stun him for a moment but not stop him.

The DA summary says Montanez then resumes yelling and approaching Fowler.

“Your battery is finished,” Montanez shouts in Spanish, the summary states. “Take out the other one. Take out the gun. I don’t care. I don’t give a damn.”

Fowler then pulls out his baton and raises it, as if to strike, just as Cordova arrives on the scene and steps out of his patrol car.

The DA’s letter says Montanez then turns his attention towards Cordova, who draws his gun and begins to back pedal as the Montanez approaches him with scissors in a clenched fist. Cordova tells Montanez to get on the ground or he’s going to “get shot.”

Montanez doesn’t get on the ground. Then Cordova shoots him.

Cordova had a Taser, pepper spray and baton, but he did not use them. During an interview with investigators after the shooting, Cordova said he dropped his baton to draw his gun because he did not believe the baton “would be effective against a sharp-edged weapon.”

Instead, Cordova said he used deadly force to match what he felt was a deadly threat posed by Montanez.

“We looked eye-to-eye and the look in his eyes was like as if he wanted to kill me,” Cordova said to investigators after the shooting, describing the moment he pulled the trigger.

“He just looked like he didn’t have a reason to live. He was just coming at me like as if he really wanted to hurt me, possibly kill me.”

Fowler, who did not fire, made a similar statement in a separate interview, telling investigators he “definitely felt” that Montanez was going to “seriously injure or kill myself or my partner.”

Prosecutors ultimately decided the shooting was justified because Cordova “reasonably believed” he was in imminent danger. However, the DA’s investigation only reviewed the shooting for criminal culpability and did not assess whether Cordova followed police policy on deadly force. That assessment comes from a separate administrative investigation by the Indio Police Department, which is confidential under California’s strict police privacy laws.

Casillas, the family’s attorney, said he has seen the body camera footage, but because of a protective order filed in the ongoing lawsuit, he is forbidden from discussing its contents, even to merely confirm or dispute the summary in the DA’s letter.

But the attorney said he did expect Montanez’s family to take the lawsuit to trial instead of accepting a settlement, in part because such a trial would make the footage public.

“The footage is, I will tell you, shocking,” Casillas said. “My sense is, when a jury eventually sees, they are going to get the same sense of how unreasonable the shooting was.”

Investigative Reporter Brett Kelman can be reached at 760 778 4642 or at brett.kelman@desertsun.com. You can follow him on Twitter at @TDSbrettkelman.