Texas Rangers probe police shooting of N.B. man
Last Updated: Tuesday, November 24, 2009 | 3:22 PM AT
CBC News
Andrew Reid, 37, was shot by police in Fort Stockton, Texas, last Friday. (CBC)The Texas Rangers have been called in to investigate the death of a former wheelchair athlete from Fredericton who was shot and killed last week in a small west Texas town.
Andrew Reid, 37, was shot by a police officer in Fort Stockton outside a motel where he was staying. The Pecos County Police Department had received a call that said a man was involved in a disturbance in the motel's parking lot.
"We got a call from the motel advising that he was out in the parking lot in his wheelchair screaming and hollering and acting crazy and everything," said Sheriff Cliff Harris.
Harris said two officers arrived on scene and tried to calm Reid, who had been arrested and released a day earlier following a 50-kilometre police pursuit. However, the officers decided that Reid needed to be arrested and put in jail for creating a "big disturbance."
At that point a scuffle broke out between Reid and the police officers.
"He finally got the other officer's gun again, stuck it in his belly. Then the other officer got her gun and fired two shots and fatally wounded him," Harris said.
Heather Reid, the sister of the shooting victim, said her brother was on his way from California to visit a friend in Austin, Texas, when he ran into trouble with the police.
Reid said she doesn't understand how the shooting happened considering her brother was in a wheelchair.
"My biggest question is how a man in a wheelchair got a gun from a police deputy, and … he got it twice according to what the police sheriff said," she said.
"That is my biggest question — I just don't understand how that could happen."
Arrested the day before
Reid had been arrested the day before the fatal shooting, but had been released to a family friend after having a mental health evaluation.
The original incident occurred while police were cleaning up an accident scene where two trucks were involved in a highway crash on Thursday. The traffic had been backed up for a long time before the officers were able to free up a lane so vehicles could get moving again.
Harris said Reid drove by in his vehicle and accosted the officers.
"He was very abusive to the officers. … He started weaving in and out of traffic," he said. "At one point he almost ran over the fire chief."
Harris said the police officers at the scene called ahead to have their colleagues catch up with Reid and that's when a 50-kilometre pursuit began.
Reid's vehicle was finally stopped when the police used a spike belt to blow out the front tires.
Injured in 1999
According to Reid's website, he was paralyzed from the waist down in a 1999 surfing accident in San Diego. He continued in sports as a wheelchair athlete, winning the Canadian Handcycling Championships in 2001.
But he also struggled, writing several accounts of his experiences as a drug addict.
His sister said he was courageous and that her family is hoping for strength to cope with their loss.
"Maybe in the future we can find out what happened, but right now we just have to get through what happened and there's nothing we can do to change it now," she said.
