Officer cleared in NLV shooting

Keith Paul

Monday, Oct. 9, 2000 | 9:56 a.m.

A North Las Vegas Police officer was vindicated at a coroner's inquest jury Friday, but two jurors said his actions in the fatal shooting of a driver in September were criminal.

The jurors deliberated for nearly two hours Friday after daylong testimony before coming back with the 5-2 verdict that the shooting was justified. In coroner's inquests only a majority is needed.

A juror said after leaving the courthouse, the group didn't know at first it need only a majority.

"If we knew that it would have only taken 30 seconds," said the juror, who spoke to the Sun on the condition of anonymity. "There was no way (the jurors who voted the shooting was criminal) were going to change their minds, and I don't think any of us were going to change ours."

A few minutes after the jury was notified the verdict didn't need to be unanimous, it returned with the majority ruling that Officer Travis Snyder was justified in the Sept. 5 shooting death of Ernest Williams Jr., who police say tried to run down the officer with his car.

The other six jurors and Williams' family declined to comment.

Snyder and Officer James Miranda were on bicycle patrol in the Victory Hill neighborhood near Carey Avenue and Clayton Street about 11:25 p.m. Sept. 5 when they spotted a car. Snyder testified they rode up to the car to talk to the occupants because there had been a high number of burglaries in the area.

Both officers testified they identified themselves as officers as they approached the car.

Williams pulled away as the officers approached him. He drove down a cul-de-sac, followed by Snyder on his bicycle. Miranda stayed back, radioing the events into police dispatch. At some point Snyder got off his bicycle and Williams made a U-turn.

Snyder testified Williams came out of the U-turn and started driving right at him.

"I gave him enough room to get by. I offered him avenues of escape," Snyder testified. "I started running backward. I could feel my footing start to slip.

"I just couldn't believe this guy was coming at me," he said.

Snyder estimated the car was less than 8 feet from him and heading directly at him when he fired two shots. He testified he fired the shots at the windshield.

The bullets actually entered the driver's side window. The first struck the steering wheel and then hit the passenger, Shereese Owens, Williams' cousin. She had a minor wound. The second bullet stuck Williams in the back of his left shoulder, went through a lung and nearly severed a major artery.

Detective Mike Rodriguez, who investigated the shooting, testified Snyder most likely decided to pull the trigger while aiming at the windshield, but the car continued to move forward in the fraction of second it took Snyder to pull the trigger.

Research by a Minnesota State University professor shows that a quarter of a second elapses from the time the brain tells the finger to pull the trigger until the trigger is pulled, Rodriguez said.

Police estimated through a reconstruction of the shooting that Williams' car was moving about eight feet per second, thus moved about two feet by the time the bullets came out of the gun's barrel.

Owens was the only other witness to the shooting, but most of her testimony Friday was incoherent and often rambling. She testified Williams drove her to the spot and started smoking what she believed was crack. She said she didn't smoke crack that night and wanted to go home and drink the beer she had bought.

Owens testified she asked several times to be let out of the car, but Williams just ignored her.

Three shots were fired before the car made a U-turn, she said; however, physical evidence showed only two shots were fired and that the shots entered the driver's side window, which would have required the U-turn.

The juror who spoke to the Sun said there was no doubt in his mind that Snyder tried everything he could to get out of the way.

"I'm not anti-police, but I'm not a big fan of police either," he said. "But (Snyder) gave him by my count four chances to escape. The officer was more than justified."