A welfare check turned deadly. Was a Pierce deputy justified in using lethal force?
A Pierce County sheriff’s deputy has been found justified in fatally shooting a 39-year-old man who knocked another deputy to the ground with a minivan while fleeing a welfare check.
Deputy Jordan Williams had been with the department four years when he shot Jerome Holman five times in an O’Reilly Auto Parts parking lot off Pacific Avenue in Spanaway on Jan. 27, 2022. The Pierce County Prosecutor’s Office decided last week Williams’ actions were lawful.
“Mr. Holman used his vehicle as a deadly weapon to assault Deputy [Devin] Ditsch and he was poised to drive forward and use the vehicle in such a manner again, which constituted a threat to the deputies,” Prosecuting Attorney Mary Robnett and deputy prosecuting attorney Ben Nelson wrote in an Aug. 25 letter to Sheriff Ed Troyer. “There was no reasonably effective alternative to stop Mr. Holman’s continued use of the vehicle in those few seconds other than using deadly force.”
The Pierce County Force Investigation Team, which conducts inquiries of police uses of deadly force, investigated the shooting and turned over its findings to the Prosecuting Attorney’s Office in June 2022. According to the office’s letter, investigators collected evidence at the scene, served a search warrant on Holman’s van, took statements from witnesses and obtained video from body cameras, dash cameras and surveillance footage.
Williams and two other deputies, Ditsch, then a trainee, and Timothy Tan, were dispatched to the parking lot after an O’Reilly employee called 911, according to the letter. A customer had pointed out a man slumped over in his driver’s seat, and she thought he was intoxicated or having a medical emergency.
The deputies responded for a welfare check, and the encounter began peaceably, body camera footage showed. Ditsch knocked on the minivan’s door, announced “police department,” and Holman woke up.
“Hey, everything OK?” the deputy said.
“Yeah, yeah, yeah,” Holman replied. He said he had just fallen asleep, and the oil filter he later told deputies he needed to exchange was on his lap.
Ditsch asked Holman for identification, and he provided his state ID card, according to the letter. Holman said his driver’s license was suspended, and Ditsch advised him to call someone to pick up the car because he shouldn’t have been driving.
Shortly after, Ditsch told Williams the vehicle identification number on the dashboard didn’t match the minivan’s plate. In the next moment, Holman started the van and tried to close his door while putting the vehicle in reverse. According to the letter, Ditsch was trapped between the door and the van while Holman reversed. Ditsch tried to grab Holman’s arm, but he was knocked to the ground.
Williams was still on the other side of the van, and he broke out a window with his flashlight while the van went in a backward arc, turning about 180 degrees to face the parking lot. The open door hit a patrol car, peeling it back. Body-camera video appeared to show Ditsch rolling across the ground and quickly regaining his footing.
Tan and Williams drew their firearms, and Williams fired six shots through the broken passenger window while the vehicle was still reversing, missing once and striking Holman five times. Holman fell out of the van, deputies called for medical aid, and Williams ran to his patrol car to get supplies to start treating the gunshot wounds. According to the letter, 10 seconds elapsed between Holman starting the van and Williams shooting him. Holman later died at a hospital.
All three deputies were cleared to return to work the month after the shooting, a spokesperson for the Sheriff’s Department previously said.
Holman’s family suing Pierce County
Prosecutors’ decision on Williams’ use of deadly force clears him of any criminal wrongdoing, but Pierce County is facing a wrongful death lawsuit from Holman’s family, who contend that the Sheriff’s Office unnecessarily escalated what should have been a routine welfare check.
Jack Connelly, the attorney representing Holman’s family, said Thursday it’s no surprise that prosecutors found the shooting justified, and he doesn’t put much stock into their reviews. He noted that the 2013 SWAT shooting of Leonard Thomas in Fife was found justified by prosecutors, but a federal jury later awarded his family nearly $15 million.
“There’s no reason that he ever should have been shot and killed in this case,” Connelly said of Holman.
The independent investigation of the shooting and prosecutors’ analysis agreed that after Holman turned his vehicle around, it was positioned in such a way that he was poised to use the van as a deadly weapon, seconds after he assaulted Ditsch in the same manner.
Connelly has said that body-camera footage showed that the deputies were not in peril. The lawsuit claims that Holman was distancing himself from the deputies when Williams “panicked” and shot Holman without warning.
The suit was filed in Pierce County Superior Court on July 25 after originally being filed in King County by Holman’s father. According to the case schedule, the parties were to be served with the suit by Aug. 22, and Connelly said defendants generally have 20 days to file a reply. A spokesperson for the Prosecuting Attorney’s Office, which defends the county against lawsuits, previously said the office generally doesn’t comment on pending litigation.
Shooting at moving vehicles comes with additional considerations and risks, and the shots are rarely effective, according to the Sheriff’s Department’s use-of-force policy. Deputies are expected to move out of the vehicle’s path when feasible rather than shoot.
The exception is when gunfire is necessary to protect against an imminent threat of serious injury, which prosecutors said was the case in Holman’s shooting. Williams also had a personal right of self defense, prosecutors said, and probable cause to arrest Holman for felony assault because he struck Ditsch while reversing.
Vehicles being used as a deadly weapon is a common justification of police killings. A New York Times Investigation published in 2021 found that over the five previous years, police officers across the United States had killed more than 400 drivers or passengers not wielding a deadly weapon or being pursued for a violent crime. In about 250 of the killings, officers shot into vehicles that they later said were deadly threats.
Holman was unarmed, according to the lawsuit. The only weapons noted in prosecutors’ letter were a pocket knife clipped to Holman’s pants pocket and a hammer beside him in the van. Nothing in the letter states that Holman grabbed those items, instead focusing on the positioning of the van.
