A Troy police sergeant will not face prosecution for the April 2016 fatal shooting of a DWI suspect, state Attorney General Eric Schneiderman said Tuesday in a detailed report that contradicts the officer's version of events and criticizes the investigation conducted by the city police department.

The report chronicling Schneiderman's year-long investigation into the shooting death of Edson Thevenin, 37, highlighted the controversial decision by Rensselaer County District Attorney Joel E. Abelove to secretly grant immunity to Sgt. Randall French when the officer testified before a grand jury that cleared him of wrongdoing.

The report concluded that because of the immunity agreement, "criminal prosecution of Sgt. French for the shooting would be impossible" under state law regardless of the attorney general's findings.

In addition, poor evidence gathering and other factors prevented the attorney general's office from being able to "disprove that Sgt. French's use of deadly force was unjustified," the report said.

The attorney general's findings raised questions about why Troy police almost immediately accepted French's contention that he shot Thevenin eight times in self-defense as he was pinned against his police cruiser by Thevenin's sedan — even though forensic evidence appeared to contradict it.

The report said city police told two civilian witnesses immediately after the fatal shots to "get the f--- out of here" without interviewing them and never followed up with a third civilian witness who wanted to change his statement. The report also stated the department "seems to have completely overlooked, or at least greatly minimized" that a fourth witness — Troy police Capt. Matthew Montanino — could have been killed by French's gunfire.

The report said Troy police should have avoided "prejudging" and quickly announcing the results of their investigation, calling the department's probe "deficient and incomplete in several respects." The department failed to evaluate evidence it possessed, did not arrange for a comprehensive reconstruction of the incident, and never had ballistics tests done on the weapons carried by French and Montanino, who was not reported to have fired any shots, the report said. The department also showed "disregard for the Thevenin family" by initially telling them he died in a car accident.

"After learning from a TPD officer at the hospital that Mr. Thevenin had been shot, the family went — in a futile search for additional information — from the hospital to the incident scene to the police department to the morgue," the report said. "The family was provided with no TPD victim services information or even a TPD contact person. The family ultimately heard the TPD's account from the TPD press conference the day after the shooting, a press conference that Mr. Thevenin's mother tried to attend but to which she was denied access."

The family has filed a federal suit against the city.

The attorney general's office also examined Abelove's conduct in a separate grand jury convened by Schneiderman. It scrutinized the investigation of Thevenin's death and obtained a grand jury indictment of Abelove on charges of felony perjury and two misdemeanor counts of official misconduct. The indictment accuses the district attorney of withholding evidence from the initial grand jury that investigated the shooting.

Schneiderman's report clearly rankled Mayor Patrick Madden, who said in a statement: "The city of Troy continues to be unfairly involved in the jurisdictional dispute between the New York state attorney general's office and the Rensselaer County district attorney."

Madden said he fundamentally disagreed with its findings and that the report was flawed.

Madden said he is confident Troy police "operations and procedures remain consistent with best practices adhered to by law enforcement agencies across the state and nation."

"While we believe the factual inaccuracies and errors contained within the report unfairly put the Troy Police Department in a negative light, we will continue to fully cooperate with attorney general's office in their investigation and remain in communication to further discuss their findings," the mayor said.

Madden, however, did not explain what aspects of the report were inaccurate.

In a statement, Troy Police Capt. Dan DeWolf would only say that the department fully supports the mayor's statement.

Andrew Safranko, French's attorney, said the attorney general's special investigations and prosecutions unit, which issued the report, was formed to investigate the deaths of unarmed and innocent civilians.

"This is not the case here," Safranko said. "Clearly, Thevenin was not innocent as he was fleeing from a lawful police stop that would have led to at a minimum an aggravated DWI charge and ultimately the loss of his license based on his prior DWI history. DA's offices routinely utilize a motor vehicle as weapon when charging crimes.

"Randy French is a well-respected police officer ... and it is uncontroverted that his leg was pinned when he shot. A paid-for report cannot change that. Let me be clear — Sgt. French did nothing wrong," Safranko said. "The report concedes that even if Sgt. French was not pinned ... he was allowed to use self-defense and was justified in his actions."

Schneiderman's office hired Precision Simulations, a California-based forensic investigation firm, to reconstruct the shooting. The report said the firm examined, photographed and laser-scanned the incident scene, the vehicles involved and all evidence involved. That included photos taken the morning of the shooting, video footage, and interviews with police and civilian witnesses. Precision Simulations also employed forensic video and audio analysis and ballistic trajectory modeling.

Schneiderman's report described the sequence of events of the incident as follows:

On April 17, 2016 at 3:26 a.m., French stopped Thevenin's Honda Civic, suspecting him of drunken driving. Thevenin, whose blood-alcohol level was more than twice the legal limit, fled and crashed into a concrete barrier near the entrance to the Collar City Bridge.

French positioned his patrol car in front of Thevenin's vehicle. Montanino positioned his car directly behind Thevenin. Montanino got out of his car. Thevenin, trying to flee again, backed up and struck the front of Montanino's car. French stepped out of his car. In the moments that followed, French fired eight rounds through Thevenin's windshield, striking Thevenin, whose car moved forward, pinning French against his vehicle.

French said he was struck by Thevenin's car and his leg was pinned. He said he pushed both hands against the hood of Thevenin's car but could not free himself and realized the car was accelerating. He said he fired multiple times into the windshield to defend himself but because the car was moving he believed his first shots had no effect. He said he was pulled to the left and, while lying on the hood of Thevenin's car, fired more rounds to defend himself.

No other witnesses, including Montanino, corroborated French's account and one civilian witness specifically contradicted it. That witness said French began to fire simultaneously with Thevenin's car hitting Montanino's car and Thevenin's car did not move forward until all the shots were fired.

The witness told a Troy officer he wanted to change his statement and an officer told him he'd "grab it" for him the next day. But no officer followed up with him before Abelove presented the matter to the grand jury later that week. Two other civilian witnesses and Montanino said Thevenin's car started moving forward before French began firing. Those witnesses did not say the shooting was unjustified, but none said French was pinned when shooting began.

"You shouldn't have done that," officers heard one of the civilian witnesses say. "You didn't have to shoot."

Trajectory evidence found French fired from "multiple locations" and was not pinned. Two shots were fired toward the driver's seat through the front windshield and six shots were fired from the side of the vehicle, according to the report.

"In light of the witness testimony, the available physical evidence, and the (firm's) report, Sgt. French's account cannot be regarded as a reliable narrative of the immediate circumstances surrounding the shooting," the report states. "At the same time, after a proper investigation, the available evidence does not allow a firm conclusion as to whether Mr. Thevenin's car was still backing away from, stopped, or moving toward Sgt. French when he started firing."

The report said Troy police minimized the risk of death to Montanino, who was walking along the side of Thevenin's car when French fired his shots. It noted that police Chief John Tedesco later told a reporter, "the way that we're placing the scene (Montanino) was not directly ... in danger but you never know about an errant bullet."

The report concluded: "In fact, Capt. Montanino was not at risk of being struck by an errant bullet; he was at risk of being struck by a non-errant bullet."

By the time at least two of the civilian witnesses were interviewed by Schneiderman's office, the report said, the position of Troy police was publicly known. The report said one witness was actively hoping to join the department, "making it that much more fraught" to offer an opinion on French's actions that had been supported by the police chief.

"Had these witnesses been promptly identified and properly interviewed, it is possible that their accounts would have been more consistent with the sentiments they expressed at the time of the shooting," the report said.

rgavin@timesunion.com ■ 518-434-2403 ■ @RobertGavinTU