Monday, March 28, 2005 | 8:58 a.m.
It took a Clark County coroner's inquest jury less than half an hour to determine that a Metro Police officer was justified in fatally shooting a Las Vegas man who held his mother and brother at knifepoint for more than seven hours early last month.
The seven-person jury Friday afternoon unanimously cleared SWAT Officer Mark Fowler in the Valentine's Day shooting of Daniel Kloskowski, 33, inside the one-bedroom apartment in the 900 block of East Twain Avenue, a residence he shared with his mother and older brother.
Officers responded to the home after neighbors early that morning reported a loud struggle inside and a man threatening to harm individuals later determined to be his mother and older brother. The standoff with hostage negotiators lasted for more than seven hours, during which time he repeatedly threatened to stab his family members, police said.
Fowler, a 16-year Metro veteran assigned to the SWAT unit for the past nine, said he entered the apartment early that afternoon after a destractive device used to create a loud, bright diversion to startle a suspect, failed to subdue Daniel Kloskowski.
That was when Fowler became increasingly concerned for the hostages' safety, he said.
"The expression on his (Daniel Kloskowski's) face was agitated almost to the point of being demonic," Fowler said. "... I took the shot immediately when I had it to put a stop to him."
His job, he said, had initially been to "get a gun between him (Daniel Kloskowski) and the hostages." When the device failed to send Daniel Kloskowski running from the living room into a nearby bathroom, as officers had hoped, Fowler pointed his department-issued M-16 at him, Fowler testified.
Officer Robert Lewis, who was the first to enter the apartment and point a gun at Daniel Kloskowski, saw the suspect weaved around his mother in a way that made it difficult for the officer to gain a clear shot, he testified at U.S. District Court in Las Vegas.
Fowler then knelt on one knee and pointed the gun at Daniel Kloskowski's forehead, a move he said SWAT officers are trained to perform to safely incapacitate a suspect without threatening the hostages.
Fowler then shot Daniel Kloskowski once in the side of the forehead. He may have never seen the officer point his gun at him, Fowler said.
Daniel Kloskowski was the second person to die at the hands of a Metro officer this year, according to the department. Ten people were killed in officer-involved shootings in 2004.
When asked what might have happened had he not shot Daniel Kloskowski, Fowler said, "Let's just say we're glad to see mother and brother are alive."
Police said the man had placed his 70-year-old mother and brother on a living room couch and was sitting on his mother's lap, threatening to slit her throat. The entire time, Daniel Klowskowski never referred to his mother or brother by name, instead calling them "the hostages," Fowler and others said.
His violent death capped what had been a history of mental illness that included a rocky sentence at the Clark County Detention Center on an earlier home invasion conviction. During his incarceration, police said Daniel Kloskowski was repeatedly sent to solitary confinement for threatening others.
Daniel Kloskowski's brother, 36-year-old Michael Kloskowski, said his younger sibling began acting erratic the night before, telling his family members he was "The Lord." Earlier that night, Daniel Kloskowski stabbed him in the back as the older brother was getting food from the apartment's refrigerator.
That behavior, he said, indicated his bipolar brother had not been taking his prescribed medication.
"If he was in his mind and taking his medication he wouldn't have done what he done," Michael Kloskowski said from the stand.
Frances Kloskowski, the third of 12 witnesses to take the stand, said her son had come to live with her after being released from a half-way house late last fall. While she urged him to find a job, he was still unemployed when the shooting occurred and had not been taking the medication.
Frances Kloskowski said that on the night before the shooting her son took her to one of the apartment's two bathrooms and began punching her and hitting her in the arm with a bathroom brush handle in between talking to "people in the corner" of the room.
She did not call police or other assistance, Frances Kloskowski testified.
"I didn't know what to do or who to call," she said. "I didn't want him to go to jail again. Jail didn't do him any good."
Michael and Frances Kloskowski declined to talk to the Sun about the jury's decision.
Daniel Kloskowski's older sister, Monica Asmussen, cried quietly as Forensic Pathologist Dr. Gary Telgenhoff described from the witness stand the fatal shot that killed her brother.
Asmussen said afterward she was "not surprised" by the jury's findings but that she did not think the situation needed to end violently.
"I understand they were doing their job," Asmussen, who lives in California, said. "I would think, with all their resources, they wouldn't always need to use violence."
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