Shot in Spokane

On a February night two years ago, Shonto Pete was shot in the head by an intoxicated off duty police officer in Spokane, Wash.

He says the man who shot him did it unprovoked. On March 16 that man, James Olsen, was acquitted of first-degree assault charges by a Spokane jury.

Now Pete is suing Olsen under the federal civil rights law and is seeking monetary damages for his injury, which resulted in $19,000 in medical bills. He has filed a claim against the city of Spokane seeking $750,000 in damages.

But he is still mad at the outcome that leaves his assailant free on the streets of Spokane.

Pete, 29, is the son of a Salish mother and Navajo father, who is from Steamboat, Ariz. He grew up on the Flathead Reservation in Montana, but did attend Ganado High School for a year in an effort to get more in touch with his Navajo roots.

He moved to Spokane to look for work, and now works as a teacher of Native culture there.

The shooting and the events and trials that have taken place since February 2007 seem straight out of a crime novel, a far-fetched crime novel at that.

Olsen's trial drew much local attention, and even some national attention, and the local Spokane newspaper has received a large amount of public letters and comments in the aftermath of the acquittal. Most of those comments call the outcome a "travesty," and a failure of the justice system.

There are two versions of what happened, Pete's and Olsen's. They are very different.

Both men admit they had been drinking that night.

According to Pete, after a night at a club in Spokane, he realized he didn't have a way to get home, which was about 30 blocks away.

He started walking but when he came upon a parked car with two people inside, he asked them for a ride. But the man in the passenger seat of the car, Olsen, yelled at Pete to get away.

Pete says he complied and continued walking along the road, but was followed by Olsen, who was by then driving a truck that had been parked near the car.

Uneasy about being followed, Pete left the roadside and took off through a wooded area, still on foot.

At this point, Olsen parked his truck and gave chase on foot. On the outskirts of a residential neighborhood, Olsen shouted to Pete that he meant no harm and would take him wherever he wanted to go, Pete said.

Alarmed, Pete replied that he was fine getting home himself, and turned around to begin walking away. At this point Pete said Olsen shot him in the back of the head.

The force of the bullet knocked Pete to the ground, but he recovered and fled toward the houses, with Olsen firing off four more rounds at him.

Pete knocked on the first door he came to, but no one answered, so he ran to another house. This time a middle-aged couple opened the door and let him in, where he called 911.

Magic bullets?

According to Olsen, he and a friend, Renee Main, were sitting in her car conversing when Pete approached and ask for a ride.

After being rebuffed, Pete jumped in Olsen's nearby truck, which was already running, and took off. Olsen and Main, who was driving, followed the truck.

In her testimony, Main concurred that Pete got into Olsen's truck and took off in it.

Olsen said the chase did end on foot, but says he drew his gun, a "baby Glock," and fired only after Pete made a gesture as if he was pointing a gun at Olsen.

In a 2007 trial, Pete was acquitted of stealing Olsen's truck but in Olsen's trial, the judge disallowed use of that acquittal. Despite the acquittal, Olsen's defense repeatedly asserted that Pete stole the truck.

In effect, the defense was able to brand Pete as a car thief in the jury's eyes, while exculpatory information was suppressed.

Why Olsen's lawyer got by with it remains a mystery. Pete's family, however, believes it reflects the prosecution's lack of commitment to get justice for the victim in the case.

Larry Steinmetz, the prosecutor, declined repeated requests from the Navajo Times for an interview, and specifically sent word through his paralegal declining to discuss testimony surrounding the truck theft allegation.

In explaining its not-guilty verdict, the all-white jury said it believed Olsen's claim that he felt his life was in danger, which made the shooting self-defense, not first-degree assault under the law.

Thus exonerated, Olsen will receive back pay for all 11 months he was on unpaid leave from the Spokane Police Department since his arrest last April.

Pete, however, is sticking with his version of the story. He is vehement about his innocence and Olsen's guilt. There are just too many things against Olsen for him to be found innocent, Pete said in a recent phone interview with the Navajo Times.

"The jury thought (Olsen shooting Pete) was in self defense, but I didn't do any of what (Olsen) said." Pete said. "How could I get shot in the back of the head if I was facing him? Did he have Roger Rabbit bullets?"

Olsen's side said the outcome was vindicating.

"(Olsen's acquittal) was just, it was what we were expecting," said a spokeswoman for Robert Cossey, Olsen's attorney.

Cossey's spokesperson said they could not comment on Pete's civil lawsuit against Olsen as it is ongoing.

But as evidenced by the public outcry over the verdict, many people in Spokane question whether the justice system did its job.

David Partovi, Pete's attorney in the truck theft trial, said there were inconsistencies in the vigor with which the city prosecuted Pete and Olsen.

"They seemed to be pulling out all the stops to convict Shonto, but a couple things were left out of the Jay Olsen trial," he said.

By "pulling out the stops," Partovi was referring to sophisticated tests ordered by the prosecution in an effort to connect Pete to Olsen's truck.

"They were looking for DNA, clothing fibers, and they checked the entire vehicle for prints," Partovi said. "(The result) was basically inconclusive. That's not normally what you do in a car theft case. Those procedures are really expensive. You never see that level of CSI-type stuff on a car theft."

Did prosecutor blow it?

In Olsen's trial, Partovi said the county prosecutor seemed to miss making a couple of key points that would have helped prove Pete's version of what happened.

For instance, the 911 dispatcher with whom Pete spoke testified that Pete said he had stolen a truck. But Michael Dale, the man who let Pete into his house to call 911, contradicted the dispatcher's testimony.

The dispatcher also admitted that the tape of the call had been erased, despite a request by Spokane police to preserve it.

But prosecutor Steinmetz did not recall Dale to the witness stand to rebut the dispatcher's testimony. Steinmetz later told the Spokane Spokesman-Review that he did not do so because Dale, who is disabled, would have had difficulty returning to court.

"I didn't want to put his health in jeopardy," Steinmetz is quoted as saying.

But in a story in the Spokesman-Review after Olsen's acquittal, Dale said he would have been glad to return to give additional testimony and that "justice has failed to be done, simply because (Marvin D.) Tucker (the dispatcher) lied."

Repeated attempts to reach Steinmetz were unsuccessful at press time Wednesday. A representative in his office, who did not give her name, said Steinmetz would not discuss the case.

Pete said he believes racism was involved in the acquittal.

"That's the only thing I can think of," he said. "Everyone knows this is a racist town. I suppose a few racist things have happened to me since I've been here. On the whole I've been OK besides being shot in the head by a cop.

"I was found not guilty of stealing the truck because I was not guilty," Pete added.

Despite his acquittal on the criminal charge, Olsen is not entirely in the clear. The Spokane police chief is implementing an internal investigation to determine if he violated police protocol the night he shot Pete.

The Spokesman-Review quotes Olsen's lawyer, Cossey, saying that it is unlikely he will return to the force because he violated so many police regulations the night of Pete's shooting.

Having been acquitted in the criminal case, however, he's eligible to collect $153,000 in back pay plus his legal costs from the city, the paper reported.

Back to top ^