Colorado widow sues after police kill mentally ill husband
By Keith Coffman
DENVER (Reuters) - The widow of a mentally ill Colorado man who was fatally shot by police in 2013 has sued in Denver federal court accusing the officers of violating her husband's rights, court documents showed on Wednesday.
Quianna Vigil also said in a wrongful death lawsuit filed in U.S. District Court that police in the Denver suburb of Thornton provide "deliberately indifferent training" to its officers in dealing with disturbed individuals.
Named as defendants are the Thornton Police Department and two of the responding officers, William Husk and Dante Carbone.
Thornton Police spokesman Matt Barnes said the department does not comment on pending litigation.
Vigil called police on Aug. 30, 2013, to get her husband, Jaime Ceballos, to leave the couple's house.
Vigil, the mother of two small children, said 31-year-old Ceballos was off his psychiatric medications, was possibly intoxicated and was pacing in front of their home with a baseball bat while acting "highly agitated."
"Rather than calming the situation down and offering professional help to this woman dealing with her mentally ill husband, these ... officers escalated the situation, shooting and killing him instead," the complaint said.
The officers knew they were not responding to a crime, the lawsuit said, but "within under one minute," an officer shot Ceballos dead.
One officer had fired a Taser at Ceballos, but only one of the probes hit him, rather than the two needed to incapacitate a person, a later investigation showed.
Husk then shot Ceballos three times, with one bullet hitting him in the leg and two striking him in the chest.
Prosecutors declined to file criminal charges against the officers after an outside review of the case concluded that the shooting was a justifiable use of deadly force.
In a November 2013 letter explaining his decision not to charge the officers, Adams County District Attorney Dave Young said Ceballos ignored repeated commands to drop the bat and advanced to within 20 feet of the officers.
Ceballos also was armed with two knives, Young said.
Toxicology results showed Ceballos had methamphetamine, alcohol, morphine, two antidepressants and a tranquilizer in his system when he died, the letter said.
The lawsuit calls for unspecified monetary damages for "ongoing grief, emotional distress, pain and suffering and impairment of the quality of life."
(Reporting by Keith Coffman; Editing by Daniel Wallis and Eric Beech)
