Man shot by police at East Lansing Meijer ordered to stand trial

EAST LANSING — A man who was shot by police officers earlier this year in the parking lot of an East Lansing Meijer store was ordered to stand trial Thursday on seven felony counts and one misdemeanor charge.

54A District Court Judge Richard Ball ruled there was probable cause to believe DeAnthony VanAtten resisted and obstructed police and committed several weapons offenses, including receiving and concealing a stolen firearm and felony firearm possession.

Ball rejected arguments from VanAtten's attorney, Stephen Milks, that officers lacked probable cause to stop VanAtten at the store in April after a citizen called 911 to report seeing a man retrieve a handgun from a vehicle and run inside. Milks argued that running away from police when they approached him at the store was, by itself, not evidence that a crime was being committed.

Ball said the officers had an obligation to follow up with their investigation about a man with a gun after VanAtten fled from them in the store and in the parking lot when they tried to make contact with him.

VanAtten, 20, was shot once in the abdomen and once in the leg in the parking lot. Two officers fired a total of eight rounds after an officer saw VanAtten with a handgun that police say was later found beneath a parked car. VanAtten's fingerprints were found on the weapon, according to testimony during Thursday's hearing.

Michigan Attorney General Dana Nessel charged VanAtten in August, a day before she announced at a Detroit press conference that her office was clearing the police officers who shot him, Jose Viera and Jim Menser, of any wrongdoing.

The felony charges include four counts of assaulting or obstructing police and one count each of carrying a concealed weapon, receiving and concealing a stolen firearm and felony firearm possession. He also faces one count of third-degree retail fraud, a misdemeanor, the records indicate.

On Thursday, Assistant Attorney General Yasmine Tucker built her case against the 20-year-old Lansing resident by calling law enforcement to the stand and presenting previously released evidence, including police body camera footage and Meijer security videos.

Milks, an assistant Ingham County public defender, questioned whether responding officers investigated a 911 caller's complaint, how they identified VanAtten as a suspect and why they shot him. He asked East Lansing police officers Austin Nelson, Jeff Horn and Menser about their basis for each of the actions.

"Now, if you and I are having a consensual contact ... when you and I begin talking, I'm free to leave right? I'm free to just run away?" Milks asked a nodding Menser. "Raise maybe a general suspicion ... but unless you see me doing something illegal, you've got no right to stop me or try to hold me back. Is that fair to say?"

He also questioned whether officers had properly vetted the 911 caller's complaint, either by further consulting the caller or locating VanAtten's light-colored Chevy Equinox mentioned by dispatchers.

In addition to ELPD and MSP police officers and Ingham County dispatcher Taylor Devlin, who reported the 911 call, Tucker called Aaron Stuttman, a Lansing man whose firearm was stolen in 2021. Michigan State Police connected it to the gun they recovered from the shooting scene, which they believe VanAtten was carrying before he was shot.

Menser pursued VanAtten through the parking lot, first with his taster, before taking out his gun when he said he saw the 20-year-old reaching for a gun.

"When he ducked behind the car, he still had the gun firmly in his hand, gripping it," Menser testified. "And then he ducked behind the bumper of the car, and ... it was my fear that he was gonna pop up and start firing rounds at me because he had that gun when he went for his cover."

After Menser fired his weapon twice at the car VanAtten was crouching behind, the officer relayed "shots fired" to other police officers. Milks noted Menser did not say who fired the two shots, which preceded six more shots fired by Viera.

VanAtten nodded patiently and occasionally grimaced at points while officers were testifying, and the video of him being shot replayed on a television screen.

VanAtten's family and members of Black Lives Matter Lansing have been critical of the officers' actions and suggested VanAtten is guilty only of “shopping while Black.”

"He was running in fear for his life," his mother, Burnette VanAtten, said in early May.

"It makes us feel, again, unsafe," Sean Holland, co-leader of the BLM chapter, said. "To look at that scene and to see as if it was a battle scene (for the police) to protect themselves … and to fire at this young man who was running away. I have no words."

The East Lansing City Council has called for Nessel to drop the charges against VanAtten.

He is being held on a $250,000 cash bond.

This article originally appeared on Lansing State Journal: Man shot by police at East Lansing Meijer ordered to stand trial