Jurors rule shooting justified

In what witnesses described as a classic case of suicide-by-cop, a coroner's jury unanimously decided Friday that Las Vegas police SWAT officer Peter Montesanti was justified in killing 45-year-old Brian Ramirez with a rifle shot to the head during a predawn standoff Jan. 17 at a Henderson intersection.

The shooting of Ramirez, a former security officer at the Nevada Test Site, occurred hours after a valleywide chase when he fled the scene after arguing with his wife and firing rounds from a Smith & Wesson .357-caliber revolver into a computer at their northwest Las Vegas home.

Police officer Jeremy Robertson, who responded to the residence at Woven Memories Street, used a cellular phone to try to talk Ramirez into surrendering while patrol cars chased Ramirez's black pickup on U.S. Highway 95 and set spike strips near Russell Road to flatten his two front tires.

"Several times he said, 'My life's over. I'm going to die tonight,'" Robertson told the jury in a courtroom at the Regional Justice Center.

After he stopped the pickup in the intersection of Sunset Road and Marks Street, Robertson persuaded Ramirez to throw out the revolver but he took a .40-caliber Glock pistol with him when he stood in front of the truck and paced the intersection, pointing the pistol at his head and shifting it from hand-to-hand at times.

Officer Howard Crosby said Ramirez yelled at officers, "Don't make me point my gun at you. Shoot me. Shoot me."

He had also told negotiators he was driving to California to die on the beach at dawn.

Lt. Larry Burns, the SWAT team commander, said once during the ordeal Ramirez fired a round into the air.

At about 5:40 a.m. the SWAT team attempted to disarm Ramirez by first throwing a flash-bang grenade followed quickly by three shots from a less-than-lethal weapon that fires wooden rounds.

A video of the intervention captured by a surveillance camera atop Sunset Station showed Ramirez, a 5-foot-9 weight lifter, buckling from the impact of the wooden dowels and stumbling backward but staying on his feet and continuing to hold the pistol.

In a matter of seconds, he moved into a combat stance, pointing the pistol at the SWAT team.

"I believe truly in my heart he was intent on shooting me," said team member James Bonkavich, who fired the wooden dowels.

That's when Montesanti, an 11-year veteran of the Las Vegas police force, fired two rounds from an M-4 rifle. One struck Ramirez in the head, killing him.

"I was praying Mr. Ramirez would do the right thing," Montesanti testified, his voice cracking at times.

"I saw him take up his stance. I couldn't believe what he was doing. His aggressive stance baffled me at first. He made the decision for me," Montesanti said.

"I was really trying to hit the center of his body. I was not aiming at his head," he said. "When I saw the damage to his head, I was very surprised to see that."

While the jury deliberated, Ramirez's parents, who had traveled from their home near Palm Springs, Calif., said outside the courtroom they were disturbed that Montesanti shot their son in the head.

"I think they used excessive force. He really didn't intend to hurt anybody," his father, Ben Ramirez, said.

He said his son had spent 20 years in the Army as a supply sergeant and had served overseas in Korea and Germany before his discharge in 2004. He moved to Las Vegas in 2006 to work at the test site. He had married his wife, Vivian, last year, a month after he divorced his first wife in January 2007.

Ben Ramirez said he doesn't know why Wackenhut Services had recently released his son from his test site job and put him on unpaid leave. He had later applied for a position as a state police officer for Nevada.

Said his mother, Lorraine Ramirez: "I know one thing. He wouldn't have pulled the trigger on those cops because he wanted to be one."

Contact reporter Keith Rogers at krogers@reviewjournal.com or (702) 383-0308.