PIQUA — A 44-year-old man was killed in the first deadly officer-involved shooting in Piqua since 1988 and his family now says they believe police went too far.
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Police were called to the 200 block of McKinley Avenue around 4:44 p.m. on reports of a domestic violence call.
Tammy West said that she and her son, David West, had gotten into a domestic dispute. She called 911 and requested officers come to their home, a call she said she now regrets making.
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Piqua Police said on Monday that David told officers he had a pistol, but his parents said he had a non-lethal pepper ball gun.
“I kept telling him, ‘It’s a pepper ball gun, pepper ball gun. It’s not - it will not kill you. It might sting you, but it ain’t going to kill you,‘” Tammy told News Center 7.
Police said David, who had retreated to the basement, refused to drop the weapon after several verbal commands. Lt. Marcos Rodriguez fired multiple shots at David when he “became visible to the officers with a weapon pointed at them,” a city spokesperson said on Monday.
David died at the scene.
As shown on News Center 7 at 6:00, his parents are looking for answers and accountability.
They said David suffered from depression and that several officers were familiar with him.
“They didn’t call him no mediator, no nothing. He told my son to drop the pepper ball gun three times,” Duane West, David’s father, said. “I heard my son tell him, ‘No.’ Then, shortly after, you heard ‘pop, pop, pop.’”
Duane said he thought the officers could have tried to tase him instead.
“To me, it was an overkill,” Tammy said.
The West family also said David and Lt. Rodriguez, an over 20-year veteran of the force, had previous interactions in the past.
Although Rodriguez was put on paid administrative leave pending the results of an investigation by the Ohio Bureau of Criminal Investigation, they’re hoping he’s either charged with David’s death or taken off the police force “for good.”
News Center 7 requested an on-camera interview with Piqua Police about the shooting, but they declined.
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