Flagstaff officers were deemed justified for fatally shooting a 29-year-old-man suffering from depression who fired at police Oct. 12, officials said.
Flagstaff police officers were deemed justified this week for fatally shooting a 29-year-old-man reportedly suffering from depression who fired at officers Oct. 12 in a Walmart parking lot.
In a written announcement Wednesday, Navajo County Attorney Brad Carlyon provided new insight into what preceded the death of Sean Brady. The incident was caught on body-mounted cameras, and the Navajo County Attorney's Office reviewed the shooting at the request of the Coconino County Attorney's Office.
Brady and his son moved to Flagstaff from California, and they were living with one of Brady's sisters. Before the shooting, Brady asked if the child's mother, who lives out of state, would take custody of the boy. She apparently declined, investigators wrote.
On Oct. 12, Brady took his son unannounced to a babysitter and "indicated he was upset and having a hard time with life," Carlyon wrote in his report.
Later that night, he parked his truck at the Walmart at 2601 E Huntington Ave., and began blasting his music, according to the report. A woman told him to turn it down and eventually went with her husband to store management to ask if there was something they could do; Brady's music was disrupting people sleeping in the parking lot.
As the couple returned, Brady tried to pick a fight with them and pulled out a gun, Carlyon wrote. They ran back to their car, called 911 and sped to the other side of the parking lot.
Police arrived moments later, and the interaction was caught on camera.
Officer William Condon arrived first and asked Brady to turn the truck off, to which Brady replied, "I just have music playing, man."
Officers Dustin Hemp and Ryan Sherf, who were together in a patrol car, arrived seconds later. As Brady again told police he only had music playing, gunshots rang out, sending officers ducking for cover.
and then saw a muzzle flash from the truck and heard the whizzing of bullets," investigators wrote.
Condon returned fire toward Brady, whose truck rolled forward before hitting a light pole and stopping in some parking-lot landscaping.
Officers waited for SWAT members to arrive. The team deployed a flash-bang device on the hood of the truck and pulled Brady from the vehicle.
Inside the truck, police said they found two rifles, a handgun, boxes of ammunition and several spent casings.
"It would be disingenuous to argue that pointing a gun towards a law enforcement officer and firing would not place the officer at a risk of serious bodily harm or death," Carlyon wrote. "In fact, such an act violates numerous Arizona criminal laws."