Cheney police shoot man with beanbag rounds

Amina Kahn was in her bedroom getting dressed after a shower to go to Wal-Mart when she heard the yelling coming through the window of the North Third Street duplex in Cheney. The 53-year-old mother and grandmother said she knew immediately people were yelling at her 31-year-old developmentally disabled son, Jacob Parker.

“I heard police yelling at Jacob to ‘drop the knives, drop the knives,’ then ‘OK, drop him,” Kahn said Monday.

According to Cheney police, that’s what patrol Sgt. Chad Eastep and Officer Nicole Burbridge had to do. Eastep fired four beanbag rounds at Parker, the fourth one finally getting the man to drop the pair of long knives — which turned out to be plastic Halloween toys — to the ground in an incident last Wednesday afternoon.

Kahn contests this portion of the department’s report, saying she was told by a neighbor who watched the entire incident from his home that Parker dropped the knives on the first shot, and then was shot three more times.

“He was out there by himself,” Kahn said. “He was in his own world. He was out there by himself, air-karating and waiting to go to Wal-Mart.”

Cheney police Capt. Rick Beghtol said former Cheney officer Kelly Hembach, who is now Cheney Public Schools’ director of school safety, was driving his district vehicle when he came upon Parker standing in the middle of the intersection of Ash and North Third, holding what appeared to be a pair of long knives at his sides and at an angle perpendicular to his body.

Beghtol said Parker was looking straight at Hembach’s vehicle. Hembach then stopped, got out and asked him if he was OK and what he was doing.

“At that point, he stares at Kelly, puts his head down and starts walking forward, knives pressed forward in an outward stance, marching at Kelly then past after he backed up,” Beghtol said. “Up close, those obviously look plastic. From 15-20 feet out, they look real.”

Hembach called dispatch to report a man with a knife at the location, at which point Eastep and Burbridge responded. By now, according to the report, Parker had walked down North Third towards Elm.

Beghtol said both officers confronted Parker and ordered him to put the knives down. Eastep had armed himself with a beanbag gun from his vehicle, and after several attempts to get him to comply failed, fired three rounds, striking Parker in the midsection area. The man still did not drop the knives, and at this point Kahn ran from her duplex and tried to physically stop Eastep, who backed her off by shoving her to the ground on her knees.

“I’ll do it again,” Kahn said. “All I wanted was them to stop shooting my son.”

Beghtol said the officers again tried to get Parker to drop the knives, and after he again failed to comply, hit him with a fourth round from about 25 feet away. This one finally had the desired effect as Parker staggered back about four feet, dropped the knives, told Eastep “Don’t talk to me that way” and complied with demands to kneel and put his hands over his head.

Parker was treated by Cheney Fire Department personnel at the scene and then transported to Sacred Heart Medical Center for further analysis. Kahn said her son is deeply bruised on the back of his upper torso, right front shoulder, under his right nipple and the right side of his rib cage.

“That one hurts the most, he says,” she added of the latter. “He’s yet to come out of the house. He hurts. He’s upset and mad and doesn’t want to go out.”

Kahn said Parker has been diagnosed as having moderate retardation with intellectual disability. He is a 31-year-old man with the mental abilities of a 10-year-old boy.

Beghtol said that after the incident, several neighbors who witnessed what happened confronted Kahn and asked her why she hadn’t contacted police about her son’s disability and alleged proclivities towards a fascination with weapons and super heroes. Kahn said she and Parker had just moved to Cheney from Everett in mid-August, and that she had only the day before had him examined by a mental health specialist in order to get him started on treatment.

She disputes the police version that he was advancing on them, saying the neighbor who watched the incident said Parker turned as if to attempt to return home. She doesn’t dispute that the toy knives he was playing with look real from a distance.

“I understand their (police) position,” Kahn said with emotion in her voice. “But it floors me, it floors the neighbors and it floors whoever else hears. Shooting somebody is supposed to be a last resort.”

John McCallum can be reached at [email protected].