The Pueblo County Sheriff’s Office was sued in federal court on Tuesday by a man’s family. Last year, deputies shot and killed a man in a middle school pickup line.
On February 22, 2022, Richard Ward, who was 32 years old, was shot three times in the chest by deputies. In October, the Tenth Judicial District Attorney’s Office cleared both of the deputies involved in the call, saying that the deputy who fired was right to do so.
“It’s just shattered this whole family,” Kristy Ward Stamp, Ward’s mother, said at a news conference Tuesday afternoon as her attorneys filed the civil lawsuit against Pueblo County. “It’s been really, really horrible. I don’t even know who I am anymore, but I’m working on it,” she said. “That’s about it.”
Ward’s younger brother, Eddy Stamp. who lives out of state, was at the news conference to support his mother. “It’s infuriating,” he said. “It’s so hard to watch the footage and see what happened with your own eyes.”
The family is upset about both what the video shows and how the sheriff’s office told the story of the shooting after it happened.
Dave Lucero, who was a chief deputy at the time and is now the sheriff of Pueblo County, gave reporters a briefing at the scene. On that day, Lucero told reporters that Ward “jumped out of the car.” On the video, a deputy pulls Ward out of the car.
Eddy Stamp said-
“To hear my younger brother say that other people’s parents are reading that story and that other kids in his class are referring to my brother as this intruder and attacker, and to have him not know how to even deal with that,”
More Latest News:
Ward was waiting for his younger brother to get out of Liberty Point International School in Pueblo West with his mother and her boyfriend. Family lawyer Darold Killmer says that Ward got out of the car to stretch and smoke a cigarette. When he got back, Killmer said he got into another SUV that looked like his mom’s by accident. Killmer said that he quickly got out of that car and walked back to his mother’s car.
Killmer said, “At worst, he accidentally scared a woman by opening her car door, but nothing else happened after he realized his mistake.” “The police had no reason to think Richard had done anything wrong, and they had no reason to think he was dangerous to them or anyone else.”
A letter from the district attorney says that a person who called 911 said that a suspicious person was trying to open doors. Someone on the phone said Ward was “on something.”
When Deputy Charles McWhorter got to the scene, he went up to Ward’s SUV and talked to him for a short time. Ward tells the deputy that he is scared because he doesn’t like cops. This is caught on camera. He tells the officer he has anxiety and has had bad experiences with police who yelled at him to stop resisting when he hadn’t done anything wrong.
McWhorter asks Ward if he has an ID, and when Ward reaches into his pockets, McWhorter asks if Ward has any weapons. Ward tells McWhorter that he might have a knife in his pocket. Cassandra Gonzalez, who came after McWhorter but before Ward, also has a body camera. It shows Ward putting something in his mouth. Killmer said that Ward had been given medicine to treat his anxiety disorder. The deputy asked Ward what he had eaten or drunk. Ward replied that it was only a pill.
McWhorter helped Ward get out of the SUV and down to the ground, where they fought for a few seconds. McWhorter took out his service gun and shot Ward three times. After the shooting, Ward’s mother and her boyfriend can be heard yelling from the SUV and asking the deputies for information. The deputies closed the car door and stood with Ward’s body for almost three minutes until medical help arrived.
Our motto is “information on time,” and our proud team really takes these words to heart. Journalist PR is a platform that gives you the latest news. We encourage people to check our website often for the latest news.