Man shot in foot files suit against North Las Vegas police
A 25-year-old man who was shot in the foot during a traffic stop this month has filed an excessive force lawsuit against the North Las Vegas Police Department.
Phillip Murry alleges that on Jan. 3 he was driving on Ellis Avenue, just west of a separate barricade situation, when he was pulled over and subsequently shot in the foot by Sgt. Michael Booker, a 10-year veteran of the department.
According to the lawsuit, filed this week in federal court in Las Vegas, Murry had driven past the police vehicle on his route home from the grocery store and had no prior knowledge of the nearby SWAT activity resulting from the barricade.
“Defendant Sgt. Michael Booker approached plaintiff’s vehicle and within an extremely short period of time shouted, ‘Hey!’ to him, mumbled some other words which were indecipherable to plaintiff and then fired his weapon,” the complaint said.
The lawsuit also suggests that Booker was not aware he shot Murry, saying that after the shooting the officer “continued to question and accuse plaintiff of acting in a suspicious manner, of crossing a police barricade and made general accusations of wrongdoing.”
Murry says in the complaint that before the ambulance arrived, he was forced to sit on the curb handcuffed. After he was transported to University Medical Center, he says he was interrogated by a detective whose “questioning seemed to be designed to find evidence … that could be used to justify the wrongful shooting.”
The nine-count civil complaint seeks an unspecified amount of damages. Among other things, it seeks relief for negligence, battery, unreasonable search and seizure, excessive force and false arrest.
After the shooting, North Las Vegas police spokesman Aaron Patty said: “We believe that the SWAT operator at one point perceived a threat. He discharged his firearm.”
There are four other wrongful shooting lawsuits pending against the North Las Vegas police department — one that resulted in a fatality, one that resulted in injury and two that resulted in the deaths of pet dogs.
Contact Jenny Wilson at jenwilson@reviewjournal.com or 702-384-8710. Follow @jennydwilson on Twitter.
