Shooting may lead to lawsuit

Jeffrey Gray once dreamed of competing on "American Idol." He now aspires to suing the Metropolitan Police Department.

You might remember Gray. He was a Las Vegas contestant on the popular television show who bombed his audition in 2004.

With eyes bugging out and in a guttural voice, the then 24-year-old sang Neil Diamond's "America" in a manner that compelled judge Randy Jackson to hide his face behind a sheet of paper, laughing. Fellow judge Simon Cowell noted that Gray pumped his right hand up and down as he sang.

"Are you aware that when you sing you do a stabbing motion? That is slightly disturbing," Cowell told Gray. "Where does the stabbing motion fit into 'America'?"

The "American Idol" judges rejected Gray.

Fast forward to Sept. 13, 2006.

Gray became the 22nd person shot at by Las Vegas police that year. One bullet struck him in the chest, but he survived.

Immediately after the shooting, police said the officer had fired because Gray had moved aggressively toward the officer while holding a weapon in the hallway of a vacant house near Charleston Boulevard and Rainbow Drive.

The "weapon" turned out to be a cell phone, and Gray says he never made a threatening gesture.

Authorities initially charged Gray with burglary and assault on a police officer. Those charges wound up being dropped when he later pleaded guilty to trespassing. He was sentenced to 45 days in the county jail.

These days, Gray is still living in Las Vegas. He works at a movie theater on the Strip collecting tickets. He proudly shows off the small, quarter-sized scar on his chest from the officer's bullet.

If you touch his back under his shoulder blade, you can feel a hard, marblelike object that he says is a fragment of the bullet that doctors didn't remove.

Before he was shot, Gray had been in trouble with the law only once, when he was cited for driving under the influence, Gray and his family said. Gray says he is looking for an attorney to help him sue the Metroplitan Police Department because he believes the police shot him for no reason.

Gray has the mental capacity of a 15-year-old, however, and needs constant supervision, his parents say. He lives at home, they say, because the one time he tried to live on his own, at the age of 19, ended with his apartment trashed and his being assaulted by a man with a champagne bottle after Gray tried to pawn the man's watch.

Unknown to Gray, the man's son had stolen the watch and persuaded Gray to pawn it, his father, Brad Gray, said.

"The kid's father tracked him down and beat the piss out of J.C.," he said, calling Gray by his nickname.

Speaking at the family's home, Gray's parents talk about Gray with equal parts love and frustration. Gray has trouble holding down a steady job and has worked as a dishwasher, cook, car washer and once even drove a Citizens Area Transit bus.

"It scared me" that he drove the public bus, Brad Gray said.

His parents charge their 27-year-old son $450 a month in room and board to teach him responsibility. They continue to dole out one pack of cigarettes and one Dr Pepper soda a day. They ration the smokes and soda because, they say, he has no self control.

His mother, Patti Gray, who works for the Metropolitan Police Department's communications bureau, agrees that her son can't live on his own.

"He doesn't think before he speaks. He doesn't make good choices when it comes to friends," she said.

She and her husband said they were relieved when he was sentenced to a month and a half behind bars after the shooting, because while he was doing his time they knew where he was and didn't worry that he was going to get into trouble.

"When he was in jail, it was a vacation for us," Brad Gray said.

"Isn't that terrible?" Patti Gray added.

Brad Gray feels somewhat responsible for his son getting shot. He kicked Gray out of the house a few days before the shooting when he got fed up with his behavior.

On the day of the shooting, Gray said he went inside the house to seek shelter from the afternoon heat, take a shower and sleep a few hours.

But someone called police to report that he had broken into the house. Police were searching the house when they found him in a second-story hallway.

Gray said he was on his knees with his hands in the air and a cell phone in his right hand when the officer shot him.

"I didn't even move," Gray said. "I just stayed on my knees. If I would have lunged at the officer I would have been shot more than once."

Because Gray survived, the officer who shot Gray, Matthew Cook, didn't have to face the public scrutiny of a coroner's inquest.

His case did go before the police department's Use of Force Review Board, however. The board determined that Cook acted within the department's policies, said Las Vegas police officer Bill Cassell, a spokesman for the department.

As for Gray, surviving the shooting left him with more confidence, he said.

"I'm not scared of anything anymore," he said, but didn't elaborate.

He is fully aware that people across the country laughed at his "American Idol" tryout. But, if the show holds auditions again in Las Vegas, "I'd probably try out one more time," he said.

"God, J.C.! I can't believe this," his father interjected.

Contact reporter David Kihara at dkihara@reviewjournal.com or (702) 383-4638.