Fleeing Man’s Death Raises Questions

A simple, sad memorial marks the spot where 18-year-old Dwight Thomas Stiggons was shot to death by a West Covina police officer last weekend while running away after he was stopped for jaywalking.

Just in front of the avocado-green garage where Stiggons was ultimately cornered and then struck in the back by a bullet sit two roses, one pink, one white, bobbing in a paper cup from a Subway sandwich store.

West Covina police say Stiggons was fired on as he was coming up from a crouch and turning, his hand emerging from the waistband of his baggy dark blue pants. The officer chasing him, police say, believed the teenager was reaching for a gun.

But there was no gun, a Los Angeles County Sheriff’s Department investigation showed. Instead, stuffed in Stiggons’ pants were loose papers, some cookies and a Bible.

The flowers pay silent testimony to a death that has focused attention once again on the most vexing of questions: When is it justifiable for an officer to use deadly force? And when should an officer decide not to pursue a suspect--particularly one stopped for jaywalking?

The Sheriff’s Department has tentatively concluded that the shooting was warranted. Stiggons--who authorities said kept putting his hands into his pants during the pursuit--reached one final time into his waistband while crouching in front of the garage, just a few feet away from the approaching officer, deputies said.

“In my opinion, it was justified because of the actions of the young man,” said Lt. Dennis Curran, who is heading the investigation.

Interviews with some witnesses, however, raise questions about the need for lethal force.

Witness Accounts

On the block-long street in the unincorporated Los Angeles County area of Valinda where the shooting took place Saturday morning, some residents said Stiggons seemed neither violent nor belligerent as the officer closed in.

“I didn’t see him do anything violent and I didn’t see him do anything provocative,” said Norma Richards, 62, who lives in the house next to the one where the shooting took place and watched it from just a few feet away in her yard.

Stiggons, authorities said, had to have known what was expected of him when confronting a police officer--because, according to court documents and police records obtained by The Times, he had been arrested a number of times in recent months on theft charges, in Corona, Los Angeles and Beverly Hills.

In fact, on April 16, just 10 days before he was shot, Stiggons was convicted in West Los Angeles Municipal Court of attempted theft in connection with an incident the day before at a Miller’s Outpost clothing store at Pico and Robertson boulevards.

Commissioner Gary L. Bindman sentenced Stiggons to three days in jail, said Deputy City Atty. Judith Levin, who filed the case.

Police in West Covina simply don’t understand why he didn’t stop when the 28-year-old officer ordered him to halt. “Ninety-nine percent of the time you put your red lights on in the patrol car, people stop,” West Covina Police Chief John T. Distelrath said.

Stiggons’ family and friends, however, say that the issue nagging police raises another question: How could an incident that began with Stiggons crossing the street against a red light end up with him bleeding on a concrete driveway, mortally wounded?

Relatives said Stiggons was a nice kid who had spent most of the past few years with his mother and stepfather at a Marine base in Okinawa, Japan.

Angie Grieger, 17, who had lived in the same base housing complex, said Stiggons liked to wear his pants “big and baggy, because that’s how he would carry stuff,” in his waistband.

“It doesn’t make any sense,” said his father, Thomas Stiggons, 41, of Cocoa, Fla., an electronics technician at the Kennedy Space Center. “None, none at all.”

Experts who have studied officer-involved shootings said it is most difficult in hindsight to fault the split-second decision of an officer genuinely in fear for his or her own safety.

“There simply is no perfect way, when you’re talking about less than a second in decision time, to guarantee a perfect outcome,” said Michael Scott, the former police chief of Lauderhill, Fla., and co-author of “Deadly Force: What We Know, a Practicioner’s Desk Reference.”

“I don’t think there are many police officers whose first thought would be, ‘I bet that kid has a Bible down his pants and a bag of cookies,’ ” Scott said. Because it’s much more common for a suspect to stash a gun or drugs there, it’s just common sense for a streetwise officer to be wary, he said.

The officer who shot Stiggons--whose name has not been released--is a veteran. He has been a police officer for seven years, and on the West Covina force for a year, Distelrath said.

‘Initial Frame’

Meanwhile, just as problematic as what experts call the “final frame” of the incident, meaning the shooting, is what they call the “initial frame”--that is, whatever prompts a pursuit that culminates in a shooting.

Experts said an emerging issue in discussions of police reform is whether, in the interest of both police and public safety, officers simply ought not to chase to some suspects--even on foot.

According to Geoffrey Alpert, a criminology professor at the University of South Carolina and one of the nation’s leading experts on police pursuits, the same mix of adrenaline and anger that fuels so many officers in a freeway car chase can also prove volatile when they bolt out of a car to run after a suspect.

“As an officer, you’re putting yourself out in the open any time you chase,” Alpert said. “If it’s a bank robber, a burglary suspect or someone you know has committed an offense . . . that’s part of police work.

“But if it’s just to spank a jaywalker, that’s getting ridiculous.”

About 9:30 a.m. last Saturday, the officer saw Stiggons jaywalk across Azusa Avenue where it crosses Temple Avenue. That intersection is in unincorporated Los Angeles County, just south of West Covina.

The officer, who had been driving his marked West Covina patrol car south on Azusa Avenue, made a U-turn. He pulled up alongside Stiggons to warn him not to jaywalk, according to sheriff’s deputies.

Chief Distelrath said officers have been paying special attention to that intersection since mid-April, when a child was killed there after darting in front of a car.

Last Saturday, as the officer spoke, Stiggons was “unresponsive” and “staring blankly,” sheriff’s deputies said.

It remains unclear what Stiggons was doing in West Covina. His mother and stepfather, who flew to Los Angeles earlier this week from Okinawa, did not return repeated phone calls to the home where other relatives said they could be reached.

In police reports, Stiggons--who apparently sometimes used the alias Thomas Stingings, as he did in the West Los Angeles case--had given authorities addresses in Corona or Los Angeles. The April 15 arrest report calls him a transient.

As the officer continued to talk, Stiggons ran away, heading west along a footpath on the south side of Temple Avenue.

The officer gave chase. “That’s one of those split-second calls,” Distelrath said. “Say you let a guy go and it turns out he raped somebody. Morally you have to live with that.”

As Stiggons ran, he kept reaching into his pants with one or both hands, deputies said.

“He reached in his waistband! I think he’s got a gun!” the officer appears to say while on the footpath, according to a slightly garbled audiotape of radio calls made during the chase.

After about a third of a mile, at the first cross street, Stiggons turned right, heading north onto Mangate Avenue.

At the first yard, directly in front of Richards’ house, Stiggons lay down, Distelrath said.

Approaching Sirens

Sirens sounded, signaling the approach of other police cars. As they neared, Stiggons stood up and ran to the next yard north, then between two cars parked in the driveway, a silver Honda Accord and a black Chevy hatchback.

“Stop! Stop right now!” the officer ordered, according to Richards.

Near the garage, by the front end of the Honda, Stiggons, who had been crouching, came up, his right hand in his waistband, Distelrath said.

Just as Stiggons “began to turn” toward the officer, as if he was “pulling something out,” the officer, standing now near the black Chevy and seeing “danger in his mind,” fired one shot, Distelrath said.

Stiggons crumpled to the ground. He was pronounced dead at 10:01 a.m. at Queen of the Valley Hospital.

The bullet’s path--an autopsy found that it hit Stiggons in the lower right back and exited near his navel--was consistent with the officer’s statement that Stiggons was “coming out of a crouch, standing or coming up, and turning toward the officer,” Distelrath asserted.

Tests to determine whether alcohol or drugs were in Stiggons’ system are not expected to be complete for at least six weeks.

Asked if there were options other than lethal force--both the officer and Stiggons heard the sirens, so each knew backup was near--Distelrath said, “The trouble is, the cars are one-quarter, one-third of a mile down the road.”

What if, Distelrath asked, the officer had “done nothing” and Stiggons “runs into the house and takes hostages?”

He sighed. “You’re darned if you do and darned if you don’t.