Loaded guns found in sergeant’s car

Lynn Doan

Friday, July 2, 2004 | 9:20 a.m.

Metro Police officers found a loaded shotgun and a loaded semiautomatic handgun in the car of the Metro sergeant who was arrested Tuesday in Henderson, according to an arrest report released Thursday.

The arrest report on Sgt. Lawrence Daniel Montero, 36, revealed that officers had "reliable information that Montero was in possession of firearms" prior to his arrest and then later found the two guns inside Montero's 2004 Chevy extended cab truck.

Metro Lt. Dennis Domansky found Montero at the main post office in Henderson, on Basic Street at Boulder Highway, and the police supervisor called for additional units -- including a specific request for an officer with a Taser gun -- to help him arrest Montero because Domansky believed Montero was a "threat to the public," the report said.

A Taser delivers an electric shock through pairs of darts that are shot from the gun.

Metro officials refused to explain Thursday why Domansky believed Montero posed a danger to the public.

The source of the firearm information, however, was not cited in the report. Neither was the basis for Metro's initial intention to take Montero into custody.

Montero, who was off-duty at the time, reportedly fled from the post office with two flat tires, which police said they suspect were flattened when he ran over a curb. He then stopped at a Texaco gas station on East Sunset Road near Gibson Road to fix the tires, police said.

As two Metro officers and one Henderson Police officer approached Montero at the station, one of the the officers had his gun trained on Montero. Montero allegedly at first started to move toward the open door of his truck as the officer holding the gun yelled at him to stop.

Montero hesitated, put his hands in the air and screamed, "Don't shoot. Don't shoot," and then fled into the gas station, where he instructed the store clerks to call the police, the arrest report says.

The report also says Montero knocked Metro Officer David Garris to the ground and was shot five times with a Taser gun before police were able to put him in handcuffs.

Metro Sgt. Rick Barela said that a Taser gun is usually effective after one shot. But Montero, who is 5 feet, 9 inches tall and weighs 190 pounds, is unusually strong, he said.

"He was just a very, very physically powerful man," said Barela, noting Montero's prior experience as a SWAT officer.

After Montero was shot with the second Taser dart, he allegedly charged Garris, knocking him to the floor and causing minor injuries to his left elbow and hip, according to the arrest report.

While on the ground, Garris could feel Montero grabbing his leg, so he shocked him for the third time and kicked him away, the report says.

As Garris and Henderson Police Officer Phil Watford attempted to handcuff Montero, "we were instructing him to release his hands," Garris wrote in the report. "Montero would not and was Tased two additional times."

Montero was booked into the Clark County Detention Center on charges of battery on a police officer and resisting a police officer with a weapon. Sources close to the investigation told the Sun on Wednesday that Montero was then taken to a mental health facility for evaluation.

Barela said Thursday he was unable to say where Montero was.

Montero is the subject of parallel criminal and internal affairs investigations, police said, but they refuse to tell the public exactly why. Montero has been a Metro officer for 13 years, working out of the department's northeast area.