Raleigh officer fired 5 shots in fatal I-440 shooting. Police report details incident

A police officer fired five shots at a man who swung a knife at officers after a crash on the Beltline, according to a Raleigh Police Department report released Wednesday.

Daniel Turcios, a 43-year-old native of El Salvador, died at the hospital after the Jan. 11 shooting, which followed a crash on Interstate 440.

The five officers who responded were identified in the report as R.C Job, A.A. Smith, K. G. Begin, D. W. Sigrist and Sgt. W.B. Tapscott.

Police say Turcios refused to drop a knife as he walked away from the crash scene with his 7-year-old son, saying “no” and shaking his head. Family members and activists have said Turcios, disoriented by the crash, couldn’t understand their commands.

Turcios’ wife, who was also in the car during the crash, pulled their son away as officers approached.

As Turcios continued walking away, officers followed, telling him to drop the knife roughly 12 times, according to the report that Police Chief Estella Patterson submitted to the city manager.

Tapscott then fired a Taser at Turcios, who fell to the ground, the report states.

As officers tried to take him into custody, the report says Turcios “swung the knife towards the officers, nearly making contact” with one of them.

Smith then fired his gun twice, striking Turcios, according to the report.

When Turcios tried to get back up and move toward Smith, the officer fired three more shots, police said.

The time between the two sets of shots was about five seconds, police said.

The report does not specify if all five shots struck Turcios.

The Raleigh Police Department did not respond when asked to clarify what kind of knife Turcios was carrying, or whether it was in police possession. Family members and activists have referred to it as a “small pocket knife.”

In 2020, Tapscott shot and killed 52-year-old Keith Collins after responding to a report of a man with a gun near Glenwood Avenue, The News & Observer previously reported. Wake County District Attorney Lorrin Freeman ruled Tapscott acted lawfully after body camera footage showed Collins pointing what later turned out to be a BB gun at the officer.

Turcios’ name was initially misspelled in the report as Jose Daniel Argueta Turicos, different from how his family and activists have spelled it.

The State Bureau of Investigations will investigate the shooting, while Raleigh police conduct an administrative investigation. Both are standard procedure for the department when an officer shoots someone.

Smith and Tapscott have been placed on administrative duty pending the investigations, also standard procedure.

Raleigh police said they have petitioned a judge for the release of body camera footage from the five officers. A hearing has been set for Feb. 2 with the Superior Court, Raleigh Police said.

Activists criticize report’s ‘aggressive’ language

In an interview Wednesday, Kerwin Pittman of Emancipate NC said police body camera footage will be critical.

“Due to it being very conflicting stories between the Raleigh Police Department’s narrative and the five-day report and eyewitness accounts on the scene ... it is pertinent to view full, unredacted body camera footage of all officers on the scene to be released to the public,” Pittman said.

Pittman criticized the report using “aggressive language and terminology” to paint Turcios as a “knife-wielding assailant,” noting that the weapon in question was a “small pocket knife.” He also said he was troubled by the report not indicating that Turcios understood little English or whether he was coherent enough to understand officers’ demands.

At a Tuesday news conference before the report was released, Pittman and Emancipate NC executive director Dawn Blagrove said the crash caused Turcios’ car to flip multiple times, rendering him unconscious. He was so disoriented and confused afterward that he didn’t even respond to his wife when she spoke to him, they said.

Pittman showed reporters at the news conference a longer video of the shooting on a laptop, saying Turcios was shot again while still on the ground.

“Based off of witnesses’ statements and collaborating with the portion of the video that we’ve seen, it is my understanding that Mr. Turcios did not attempt to get back up and actually charge at this officer wielding the knife, as stated in the five-day report,” he said. “And this is why it is extremely important for this footage to be released.”

Three eyewitnesses were interviewed by Emancipate NC who said they saw Turcios being shot multiple times on the ground.

Blagrove said Tuesday that a medical report provided to the family “clearly indicates that (Turcios) was shot multiple times.”

The day of the shooting, Patterson said, officers found Turcios carrying a knife that he refused to drop and that as he walked away, an officer used a Taser “to try to defuse the situation.”

In a video recorded by a witness, Turcios was shot moments later, as he tried to get up.

Patterson said police shot him after he “swung a knife at officers.”

“We still believe that this shooting was avoidable based on the information that we have,” said Blagrove in a follow-up interview Wednesday. “There is a strong possibility that the officer acted outside of the color of law and the scope of his duties when he continued to fire (at Turcios.)“

Blagrove said the police report minimized a five-second gap between the first two gunshots and the other three fired by Smith, which were recorded in a witness video.

Those seconds should have been “enough time for a professional in law enforcement” to determine if they should continue to fire.

Blagrove argued it’s noteworthy that only one officer out of five on the scene decided to use his firearm several times in the incident.

Knife did not justify shooting, Emancipate NC says

Blagrove said while Turcios “had a very small pocket knife,” it did not justify police shooting him.

“Let us be clear that (the knife) is being used to manipulate the tragic outcome,” she said. “Whether (Turcios) had a thumb pin or a kitchen knife ... he was not wielding (it) crazily trying to attack anyone.”

“He was walking, tased, falls to the ground ... and is murdered in front of his family,” she added. “That is the story here. That is what matters.”

Rosa Jerez, Turcios’ wife, told reporters in Spanish that her children were asking the officers not to kill their father.

“They murdered him in front of my children, in front of me,” Jerez said in Spanish.

“He wasn’t doing anything to (the police),” she said. “I told them to leave him alone because he wasn’t doing anything; they didn’t listen to me! And he didn’t understand anything they told him. My children screamed at them not to kill him. They murdered him as if he was a dog. They didn’t care about him at all.”

Turcios immigrated from Olomega, a small town in southeastern El Salvador, to the U.S. in 2003, Jerez told The N&O.

He worked as a handyman, building and repairing kitchens, bathrooms and chimneys and doing other construction-related work, she said.

Staff writer Josh Shaffer contributed to this report.

This story was originally published January 19, 2022 at 11:36 AM with the headline "Raleigh officer fired 5 shots in fatal I-440 shooting. Police report details incident."