In the tense minutes before two Bexar County sheriff’s deputies fatally shot Gilbert Flores in August, the knife-wielding man said he wanted to die and ignored orders to surrender, according to a video of the altercation released Friday by the district attorney’s office.

“I’m not going to prison,” Flores yelled at the deputies in the first moments of the video shot by neighbors in their house about a half-block away.

“He’s got a knife in his hand,” a man can be heard whispering in the video.

“He’s saying he wants to die,” a woman said later, offering a blow-by-blow account of the standoff. “This is crazy.”

Both witnesses openly wondered why it was taking a long time for backup officers to arrive. They recorded seven minutes and 41 seconds of video before shots were fired.

And much like a bystander’s video of the shooting that had already been made public, the footage shows that deputies shot Flores, 41, after he raised his hands above his head in apparent surrender.

“Why did they shoot him?” the shocked woman asked.

Deputies Greg Vasquez and Robert Sanchez had responded to a domestic violence call Aug. 28 at the home of Flores’ parents on the far Northwest Side.

The second, longer video made public Friday shows more of the struggle from a different angle. Authorities released the video to the media after a Bexar County grand jury declined to indict Vasquez and Sanchez on Wednesday.

“If you only saw that second video, in my opinion, I think there would have been an indictment,” District Attorney Nico LaHood said. “But we present everything, from the 911 tapes to everything.”

The district attorney’s office released recordings of 911 calls made by Flores’ distraught mother, who said her son had beaten his wife and baby.

“I got a knife, and I’m going to suicide by cop,” Flores can be heard saying in one of the phone calls. “Get ready to pull the trigger.”

LaHood said the tapes showed Flores’ state of mind and what the deputies were up against.

“The 911 audio, when you hear that, you’ll get what I mean,” LaHood said. “You have a man saying he wanted to die by police officer, suicide by cop, he had been violent to his wife and to a baby, and his mom was crying. It’s not a flattering 911 tape of the deceased.”

Deputies tried using a stun gun, but Flores blocked it with a chair. In the video released Friday, Flores picked up the stun gun from the street and threw it away from the deputies.

The new footage shows that the deputies kept their distance from an agitated, shirtless Flores — until he started trotting toward their parked patrol vehicle.

“He’s got a knife,” the man with the video camera said. “Oh, he’s going in the cop car. No!”

The two deputies moved closer to Flores. He turned and walked toward them. They backed off. Flores turned back to the patrol vehicle.

“Stop! Stop!” a deputy yelled. Flores turned around. The deputies shouted more commands. Flores stood at the edge of a driveway. Both deputies were in the street.

Their exact distance from Flores is difficult to gauge in the video, but they appeared to be roughly two car lengths away from him — about the closest they had allowed Flores to get up to that point.

Flores stood still and raised his hands above his head. Authorities said he was holding a knife in his left hand. About three seconds later, the deputies opened fire — either while Flores still had his hands up or milliseconds after he started to lower them. Flores doubled over and fell.

“Oh (expletive), they shot him?” the woman in the video asked. “What the (expletive)? Why did they shoot him?”

Geoffrey Alpert, an expert on police use of force at the University of South Carolina, said the deputies might have faced a deadly threat if there were unsecured weapons in the patrol vehicle. A law enforcement source said a rifle was inside.

“If there’s a gun sitting on the front seat and the car’s unlocked, the window’s down, that’s a huge threat,” Alpert said.

But Alpert cautioned against a widespread belief in law enforcement circles: that a knife-wielding suspect standing 21 feet away from a police officer can rush and attack before the officer has a chance to pull a weapon.

“Officers are now trained to think that 21 feet is a kill zone, and they used it as such,” said Alpert, who emphasized that the “21-foot” rule doesn’t take into account the condition of the suspect or the tactical situation of the officer. “That’s why this is such pseudoscience.”

Sheriff’s office spokesman James Keith said the department trains deputies on the 21-foot rule, but he noted that “it’s hard to gauge it in a real situation.”

“We train deputies to keep their distance, stay on guard and keep talking to the person with the knife to try and defuse the situation,” he said. “Deadly force is the last option, if they feel their life is in danger.”

If the deputies had faced criminal charges, LaHood said, it would have been difficult to convict them. To secure an indictment, nine out of 12 grand jurors must agree that there’s “probable cause” that a crime was committed.

LaHood pointed out that convicting a defendant faces a stricter legal burden — a jury must unanimously agree beyond a reasonable doubt that a defendant is guilty.

“We knew if we got past the grand jury process, it was going to be a problem in a regular court of law to a 12-member jury,” LaHood said.

Thomas J. Henry, a lawyer for the Flores family, declined to discuss the video until he’s had a chance to view it. Henry filed a federal lawsuit on behalf of the family that accuses the deputies of “executing” Flores.

Henry, who contributed more than $1.2 million to LaHood’s election campaign last year, said LaHood and other district attorneys should recuse themselves in situations like the Flores case to remove any hint of a conflict of interest.

District attorneys protect the legal interests of the county, Henry said, yet they also control the flow of information to grand juries.

“How can you be defending the county from a lawsuit and at the same time be presenting the case to a grand jury?” Henry asked. “Because you know if there’s an indictment of those officers, it could negatively affect the civil case. So absolutely it’s a conflict.”

LaHood defended his involvement in the case.

“If I say that, ‘Yes, I should recuse myself,’ that means I’m admitting and I acknowledge that I would do something unethical,” LaHood said. “And I would never, ever — and I don’t give a damn — ever do anything unethical or illegal. Never. I don’t care.

“Everything we do is a very high standard, and everyone in our office knows that, period,” LaHood said.

Sheriff Susan Pamerleau said at a news conference Wednesday that the deputies were relieved by the grand jury’s decision and eager to get back to work.

“While we support the grand jury’s decision to no-bill these deputies, it’s important to recognize that there are no winners in this situation,” Pamerleau said. “A man lost his life, and for that, we are all saddened.”

jtedesco@express-news.net

Our past coverage of the shooting of Gilbert Flores:



