Police officers named in shooting

Keith Paul

Friday, June 7, 2002 | 9:27 a.m.

Metro Police Thursday released the names of an officer and a trainee involved in a shooting earlier this week that left a 22-year-old Las Vegas man wounded.

Officer Stephen Novier, 41, fired two shots at Douglas C. Ackley, hitting him in the lower torso about 5 p.m. Tuesday at an apartment complex at Mojave and Desert Inn roads. The trainee, Officer Michele Casper, who had just graduated from the police academy, was training with Novier at the time of the shooting but did not fire.

Novier and Casper, 37, were put on paid administrative leave after the shooting. Novier, an officer for five years, will face a Use of Force Board hearing to determine if the shooting was within department guidelines, but he can return to duty before the hearing. The pair will likely return to duty next week, said Lt. Vincent Cannito, a department spokesman.

When the officers were called to a fight at the apartment complex, they went to talk with a man at the rear of the apartments but he fled on foot, police said.

Novier and Casper chased him, and as they rounded a corner they saw the man pointing a gun at them. Novier fired one shot, hitting the man and knocking him to the ground, police said.

The man then reached for the gun and fired a shot at the officers. Novier then fired another shot, hitting the suspect again, police said. The officers were not hit by the suspect's shot.

Last year Novier received the Medal of Valor along with nine other officers for their part in a Jan. 28, 2001, shooting on Swenson Street near Flamingo Road in which two officers were hit by gunfire in an ambush.