Officer Pleads No Contest in Accidental Shooting
A former Torrance police officer--accused of lying to cover up his culpability for the accidental shooting of an unarmed man last year--pleaded no contest Tuesday to charges that he filed a false police report and obstructed an investigation.
Timothy Pappas, who was fired following the shooting, will face up to two years in jail when he returns to Los Angeles Municipal Court Dec. 7 for sentencing. It is more likely that Pappas will be fined and placed on probation, said Deputy Dist. Atty. Christopher Darden.
In exchange for the plea to the misdemeanor charges, authorities dropped felony allegations that Pappas entered into a conspiracy to obstruct justice and to falsely charge another with a crime.
The charges stemmed from a May, 1988, shooting that left construction worker Patrick J. Coyle partially paralyzed.
Pappas had said that he fired his gun when Coyle moved suddenly, as if to reach for a weapon, police reports say. Two back-up officers supported that account for a time, but one, Officer Timothy Thornton, eventually told superiors that the story was a lie and that Pappas fired his gun accidentally, the reports say.
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