Violence occurs off camera
BILL LUCKETT Star-Tribune capital bureau | Posted: Tuesday, July 12, 2005 12:00 am
CHEYENNE - What began as a routine traffic stop took a turn for the worse about 19 minutes after it began, a state trooper's patrol car video recording of the incident shows.
Seventy seconds later, the woman had been fatally shot.
On Monday, the Wyoming Highway Patrol released the video of the June 16 incident on Interstate 90 about 20 miles west of Gillette.
The video from Trooper Paul Brunner's in-car camera does not show the actual shooting or the scuffle immediately preceding it, as the violence occurred by the driver's side of Brunner's car.
But it does capture Brunner's voice during and after the incident, including accounts he gave passersby who had stopped to give him assistance.
Campbell County Attorney Jeani Stone has determined that Brunner was justified in using deadly force, though Brunner remains on administrative leave from the patrol.
Brunner stopped Alyssa May Harriet for speeding at 7:15 p.m. June 16.
At 7:34 p.m., after Harriet had attempted field sobriety maneuvers and blew into a portable breath test device, Brunner told her to place her hands behind her back, because she was under arrest.
Harriet did not cooperate, and when Brunner reached for her left arm, she pulled it away, and then with her right hand she grabbed onto his handcuffs.
Brunner kept telling the woman not to resist. At one point, Harriet said, "Why not? I've done this before."
Then Harriet became more aggressive, and Brunner told her not to fight with him.
Harriet replied, "I'm already in trouble. What difference could it possibly make?" At the same time, she grabbed the back of Brunner's neck, and the two fell onto the hood of his car. Harriet appears taller than Brunner on the video and weighed 185 pounds, according to the Division of Criminal Investigation's report, while Brunner is about 5-foot-7 and weighs 130 pounds, the Associated Press reported.
Thirty seconds after Brunner first attempted to arrest Harriet, their scuffle landed them outside camera range on the driver's side of the car. Ten seconds later, Brunner shouted, "Drop it. Drop it now."
Ten seconds after that, he shouted three times at Harriet to "Get down." Shots cannot be heard on the copy of the videotape provided to the Star-Tribune; the audio cuts out intermittently throughout the recording.
About 20 seconds later, Brunner was breathing heavy.
A truck stopped in front of Harriet's car, and four men ran out to assist Brunner, who said, "Shots fired. Shots fired. I need an ambulance for myself and one victim. Multiple shots fired. I've been hit on the head. I need two 10-52s immediately."
He directed the men to his first aid equipment and asked them to help the woman. At one point, one man said there didn't appear to be anything they could do for her.
Brunner also told bystanders not to move anything, because the Division of Criminal Investigation would need the scene to be as undisturbed as possible for the coming probe of the officer-involved shooting.
He also told the same story several times, that Harriet had grabbed his baton, hit him on the top of the head with it, and attempted to hit him again when he shot her.
"The way she was starting to swing the second time, if I hadn't have hit her first, she'd have got me," he said.
Brunner also expressed anguish over what had happened.
"I can't believe I had to do that," he said, apparently through tears. "I tried to get her to go down."
One man told him that if he didn't have a choice, he didn't have a choice.
Brunner replied, "I didn't want to do it. I never thought it would be me."
He said being hit on the head with the baton might have blacked him out for a second.
"It hurt like hell. I almost thought she knocked me out," he said.
Capital bureau reporter Bill Luckett can be reached at (307) 632-1244 or at bill.luckett@casperstartribune.net.
Patrol: Video shows trooper was 'professional'
By BILL LUCKETT
Star-Tribune capital bureau
CHEYENNE - A video recording released Monday shows that Trooper Paul Brunner was justified in shooting Alyssa May Harriet on June 16 near Gillette, Wyoming Highway Patrol Lt. Carl McDonald said.
"It's clearly obvious during this stop that his behavior was purely professional," McDonald said.
He said Brunner's performance was in accordance with how the patrol trains its troopers, and the trooper was not responsible for the violence that took place.
"This was not his decision," McDonald said. "This was the decision of the woman he was trying to arrest."
He said the hearts of the Highway Patrol go out to the woman's family and to Brunner.
The recording was made by a camera installed in Brunner's car. The in-car cameras are found on all patrol cars and cost about $5,000 to $6,500 apiece.
On one hand, troopers might feel like they are being taped because they are not trusted, but McDonald said the tapes are valuable for several reasons.
They provide hard evidence of what happens during a traffic stop, they can be used to train troopers who might not otherwise know they have developed some bad habits, and they provide an excellent defense for troopers against false claims.
"People do come up with outrageous claims that are completely false, and as soon as the video is even talked about, they hang up the phone," McDonald said.
He said TV shows such as "Real Stories of the Highway Patrol" have requested videos before, and it is common for attorneys to request them as evidence in court, but the Brunner shooting video is the first one McDonald can remember the patrol releasing to the media.