Woman’s shooting justified

Pepper spray. Four Taser jolts. Nine blasts from a bean bag shot gun.

None of it stopped Denise Glasco, who still clutched her knife and continued wading through stopped traffic on Martin Luther King Boulevard trying to open car doors, police and witnesses told a coroner's inquest jury Thursday.

Not until two bullets ripped through her chest did she fall to the ground. Even then she tried to push herself up before succumbing to the fatal wounds.

After hearing the events leading up to Glasco's June 12 death, the coroner's inquest jurors deliberated for about 30 minutes before unanimously finding that Las Vegas police officers Jennifer Santiago and Kenneth Krmpotich were justified in the shooting.

Police first encountered Glasco about 7:50 a.m. after a disturbance at the Jack in the Box restaurant on the corner of Martin Luther King and Lake Mead Boulevard, where she had pulled a knife on a teenager getting breakfast with his mother, police said.

But Glasco's erratic behavior began hours earlier when she spent the night at an acquaintance's house. Alexandria Fields, a 14-year-old who lived at the house, said she was scared by what she saw.

"She started acting like she was seeing stuff," she testified. "She was talking to herself. She was tripping."

An autopsy found PCP in Glasco's system. The drug can cause hallucinations and make users immune to pain.

Officers Justin Byers and Zohn Kovene responded to the Jack in the Box call and tried to talk to Glasco, who had moved across the street with her 3-year-old son in tow. Glasco ignored the officers' commands to stop and tried to get into a minivan stopped at a red light.

That's when Officer Mary Lou Crocker shot Glasco with her Taser. The shock didn't drop Glasco, but it stunned her long enough to allow Byers to pull Glasco's son away from her, he testified.

Crocker hit Glasco with another five-second burst of electrical current, but she just ripped the Taser prongs from her skin and continued up the street, Crocker testified.

"She was saying, 'You can't hurt me. ... You're going to have to kill me,'" Crocker said.

Glasco continued walking backward up Martin Luther King while the officers followed. Krmpotich shot Glasco four times in the torso with a bean bag shotgun, and she hardly flinched, the officers said. Santiago shot her with a Taser, and Krmpotich fired twice more at her chest with his bean bag shotgun.

When those failed, Krmpotich tried to shoot the knife from Glasco's hand even though it's something police aren't trained to do, he said. One bean bag hit Glasco's right biceps, but her arm didn't move and she didn't drop the knife. He fired at her right hand but missed, he said.

Two more bean bags to her chest and a blast of pepper spray proved just as futile.

"She was just laughing. No effect," said Jeffery Payne, who watched the confrontation unfold from a nearby McDonald's. "She never stopped."

The officers followed Glasco as she moved from the empty side of the street into the traffic backing up in the southbound lanes. They yelled at motorists to lock their doors and roll up their windows as Glasco started reaching into cars and trying to open doors, the officers testified.

"We were all frantic, just worried about what she might do," Santiago said. "We didn't want a hostage situation."

Santiago fired one shot when Glasco lunged at Officer Robert Alford, she said.

Glasco remained standing despite the gunshot wound to her chest, the officers said.

"She yells, 'Is that all you got? That didn't hurt,'" Kovene said.

A few seconds later, Krmpotich fired a second round into Glasco's chest after she again lunged at Alford, he testified. His account varied from Santiago's, who testified the second shot came as Glasco tried to enter a sport-utility vehicle.

Glasco collapsed after the second gunshot and tried to push herself up before falling to the pavement a final time, the officers testified. Police handcuffed her and started cardiopulmonary resuscitation until paramedics took her to the hospital, where she was pronounced dead.

Several of Glasco's relatives sat through the inquest, shaking their heads and sighing in disbelief throughout the daylong hearing. Despite testimony from five police officers and five other witnesses that Glasco had a knife, the relatives weren't convinced she was armed.

Glasco's mother, Betty Fowler, said she would sue the Metropolitan Police Department.

"They're going to let those murderers go back on the job?" Fowler said. "It's going to be criminal when I get through with it. I'm going to get a lawyer."