2 Officers Cleared in Shooting Death of Wheelchair-Bound Man

Two San Diego police SWAT officers have been exonerated of any criminal wrongdoing in the shooting death of an 80-year-old man in a wheelchair who purportedly tried to shoot them with a gun that repeatedly misfired.

Officers Wayne R. Spees and Mel J. Lofftus were given no “alternative to the use of deadly force” after being called to the man’s Del Mar-area condominium to help prevent him from committing suicide, according to a report from the San Diego County district attorney’s office that was released by police Tuesday.

Killed in the March 19 shooting was Warren (Jimmy) Harrington, the former owner of a chain of appliance stores who had recently suffered a stroke. He was shot three times.

His widow, Martha Harrington, said Tuesday that she agreed with the district attorney’s conclusion that the officers were forced to fire their weapons after running into the home and finding her husband trying to shoot them with the handgun.

“It certainly was an unfortunate incident,” she said. “But I don’t think they had any other choice.”

Threatened Suicide

Police were dispatched to the home in the 2200 block of Del Mar Scenic Parkway after Harrington began threatening to kill himself with a five-shot, .32-caliber revolver. While his wife and police chaplain Michael MacIntosh tried to persuade the man to give up the gun, members of the police Special Weapons and Tactics team assembled outside.

Police Sgt. Jim Clear authorized SWAT officers to enter the home after Harrington refused to leave the kitchen, where he was pointing the weapon at himself. One officer burst into the home and fired tear gas at Harrington. A second officer ran in and ordered his police dog to attack the elderly man, but the command was ignored.

At that point, the district attorney’s report said, “Mr. Harrington raised his revolver, pointed it at various officers, and repeatedly pulled the trigger.”

Spees, 28, and Lofftus, 26, the next officers inside the home, heard several clicks from Harrington’s weapon, the district attorney said.

Spees, a five-year police veteran, fired a single shotgun round, striking Harrington in the upper left shoulder and upper left arm. Lofftus, a six-year veteran, fired four rounds from his semiautomatic pistol, with two shots striking Harrington in the right side of the chest.

‘Pointed Revolver at Officers’

“Officer Lofftus confirmed that Mr. Harrington had pointed his revolver directly at the officers,” the district attorney’s report said.

“He believed Mr. Harrington was either pulling the trigger or trying to pull it,” it said. “He fired until Mr. Harrington’s gun arm fell into his lap.”

A Police Department criminalist, Eugene Wolberg, determined that the trigger on Harrington’s gun “had been pulled five times in an effort to fire the gun,” the district attorney’s report said.

Wolberg also told the district attorney’s office that the gun failed to fire because the weapon had “faulty primers resulting from age and moisture which the ammunition had absorbed.”

“If the officers had hesitated,” the report said, “the old ammunition which Mr. Harrington was using might have ultimately discharged.”