SCSO, officers sued over 2023 shooting that killed man

GREENEVILLE, Tenn. (WJHL) — Sullivan County Sheriff’s Office (SCSO), the county and three officers face a federal lawsuit related to the April 19, 2023 midday shooting death of a man outside a Blountville Dollar General store.

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Casey Crowley was shot four times — twice each by Sgt. Michael Nygaard and Deputy Benjamin Beach — according to the seven-count federal lawsuit filed Thursday, which claims officers used excessive force. They were responding to a welfare check and found Crowley asleep in his truck in the store’s parking lot.

A Sullivan County grand jury reviewed a Tennessee Bureau of Investigation (TBI) report and determined the men followed policy and did not use excessive force. Deputy Tyler McCready was the other officer involved.

The lawsuit has a transcription from a short cell phone video taken by a witness, which includes audio from one officer saying “I’ll blow your (expletive) head off” just as the first of four shots is fired. The suit, which includes wrongful death among its seven counts, seeks an unspecified amount of monetary damages and claims the phone video shows the four shots being fired over a period of about four seconds.

It alleges Crowley posed no threat to the officers and was not suspected of a crime. Officers located a pistol at the scene, but the suit says Crowley was not holding it, that it didn’t have blood on it even though Crowley was shot in the hand, and that it did not contain latent fingerprints.

Both shooters, the suit says, “acted objectively unreasonably in applying deadly force upon Mr. Crowley because (they) did not have probable cause to believe that Mr. Crowley posed a threat of serious harm” to them or others.

It accuses the SCSO, Sheriff Jeff Cassidy and Sullivan County of failing to adequately train and supervise the officers. Deputy Tyler McCready is also a defendant, with the suit claiming he failed to intervene as the other officers used excessive force against Crowley.

Crowley, 48, was pronounced dead within minutes of the shooting, and the lawsuit claims Sullivan County EMS personnel observed four gunshot wounds as they attempted to resuscitate Crowley after Nygaard had begun those efforts.

TBI investigation complete, no indictments

The TBI investigated the officer-involved shooting, as is customary, and passed its findings on to Second District Attorney General Barry Staubus. Staubus passed those on to a grand jury, and sent News Channel 11 a brief report on the grand jury’s findings, which determined the officers did not violate the SCSO’s use of force policy and “were justified in deploying their weapons.”

The report describes a scene in which officers were sent to check “on a man slumped over in the driver’s seat of his running vehicle.” It says officers began talking to Crowley and that he “appeared under the influence with the vehicle in reverse and his foot on the brake.”

Crowley “became agitated” and wouldn’t leave the truck, the report said, and “refused to exit the vehicle causing them to fear he would flee, so an officer reached in to turn the vehicle off when he saw the man pull out a gun.”

The report says an officer “quickly pinned his arm against the man’s right hand that held the gun.” After a “small struggle,” the officer with his hands in the truck reportedly began to lose his grip “on the man’s gun hand.”

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He then allegedly yelled to other officers that the man had a gun “as the man pushed the officer’s arm against the horn causing it to go off.” At that point, the report states, the officer fired two shots, after which “another officer (Beach) then fired two rounds into the car.”

The officers tried to save Crowley prior to EMS arriving. A postmortem toxicology report showed “high levels of a substance believed to be methamphetamines which could cause violent behavior” while Crowley’s wife reportedly confirmed he had “numerous mental health diagnoses.”

After reviewing testimony from officers and the SCSO’s use of force policy, as well as the provided witness video, “which confirmed the statements given by officers,” the grand jury found the officers “followed policy and were justified in deploying their weapons.”

According to SCSO spokesman Capt. Andy Seabolt, Beach has worked for SCSO since October 2014, Nygaard since March 2019 and McCready since July 2020.

In compliance with agency policy, immediately following the incident, the men were placed on administrative leave with pay (not a punitive suspension) and attended a critical incident debriefing.

Lawsuit paints different picture

The lawsuit, filed by attorneys Corey Shipley of Greeneville and Christopher Rogers of Johnson City, describes a significantly different course of events. It claims that the handgun “allegedly found at the scene” had no latent fingerprints and was not registered to Crowley, whose wife allegedly claimed she had never known him to own or use a gun.

The lawsuit says Crowley, who allegedly had early onset dementia as a result of a stroke as well as total hearing loss in his left ear, entered the Dollar General at 1498 Highway 126 in Bristol at noon April 19, 2023. After he asked a clerk for directions and went back to his truck, Crowley was seen by both the store clerk and a customer sleeping in the driver’s seat.

After the employee called for a welfare check, McCready and Beach arrived at the scene, with Beach (as shown in photos) blocking Crowley’s truck by parking perpendicularly inches behind it.

The two deputies spoke to Crowley on either side of the truck, with Beach on the driver’s side, the suit says. It adds that “(U)pon information and belief, once Deputy McCready found that there was no evidence of a weapon, he moved around to the driver’s side to where Officer Beach stood.”

Crowley apparently told the officers he wanted to camp at “Washington State Park,” and also told officers he was tired. During a TBI interview, the officers said Crowley “seemed lethargic and disoriented.”

As Crowley was interacting with the deputies and producing two IDs for them, Nygaard arrived and asked Crowley to exit the truck and sit on the curb. Nygaard “alleges that Mr. Crowley was noncompliant and that the vehicle was running,” the complaint states, but adds that the video shows neither reverse or brake lights and that the witness “did not see Mr. Crowley’s vehicle move during the incident.”

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At this point, Nygaard “forcibly reached into Mr. Crowley’s truck to pull out the keys from the ignition.”

Nygaard alleged that Crowley then tried to grab Nygaard’s service pistol, but the lawsuit says no latent prints were found and that Deputy Beach claimed it “appeared as though Mr. Crowley grabbed Sergeant Nygaard’s arm.”

Nygaard allegedly told TBI investigators that his hand slipped from the top of Crowley’s left hand and that he saw Crowley “move his right hand to his right pocket to pull out a gun,” but the suit adds that Nygaard is the only officer to claim to witness this.

Nygaard also said he saw the butt of a gun coming out of Crowley’s pocket.

The witness, the lawsuit states, recalled hearing officers yell at Crowley to get out of the truck before hearing “someone yell, ‘I’ll blow your (expletive) head off,’ followed immediately by a succession of four shots.”

The witness told TBI the officers were “forcefully trying” to pull Crowley out of his truck “and he wouldn’t come,” the suit states.

According to the suit, the phone video’s 34 seconds show Nygaard standing by the driver’s door of Crowley’s truck with his left arm inside the truck and his pistol in his right hand at the one-second mark.

Nygaard brings his right hand into the driver’s compartment and by the four-second mark the first gunshot is heard, with all three officers “engaged inside the vehicle through the driver-side door.”

A second gunshot is heard at the five-second mark, with the third and fourth shots coming between approximately the six and seven-second mark.

Evidence collected by TBI at the scene included a handgun with no blood on it in addition to none of Crowley’s fingerprints on it, according to the suit. There was also a gray pouch containing clear plastic baggies of an unknown substance.

The suit includes a photo showing a bullet hole with blood around it near the passenger headrest, and claims Crowley “was clenching the right headrest with his right hand which was shot during the incident.”

The lawsuit alleges that none of the three officers acted reasonably in the situation. Rather, it claims, they “acted recklessly and used excessive force in shooting a non-dangerous driver who suffered several disabilities that would reasonably impede his ability to understand and comply with an officer’s instruction.”

All defendants are charged with violating Tennessee’s Tort Liability Act. A count against McCready alleges the use of excessive force and failure to intervene.

Nygaard and Beach face separate counts of excessive force and assault and battery.

All defendants are named in a count of outrageous conduct and inflicting emotional distress.

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