Lawsuit accuses SWAT team of fatally shooting mentally ill Upper St. Clair man in back

An Upper St. Clair man who was killed by police officers responding to his mental health crisis in January was shot eight times in the back, a federal lawsuit alleges.

Filed on Monday, the lawsuit claims that Christopher Shepherd, who was armed with a kitchen knife, was running away from officers when they fired at him outside his home on Lamar Road.

The complaint, filed by Shepherd’s mother, Susan Shepherd, who is administering his estate, names as defendants Bethel Park Detective Giles Wright, who commanded the emergency response team that day; the boroughs of Baldwin, Brentwood and Bethel Park; the South Hills Area Council of Governments; and 20 unidentified police officers.

Gavin Robb, who serves as solicitor for Brentwood, said he had not yet seen the complaint and could not comment.

Attorneys for Bethel Park and Baldwin did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

The lawsuit includes civil rights claims for illegal seizure and use of excessive force, wrongful death, battery and claims that the municipalities failed to properly train their officers in de-escalation techniques for people experiencing a mental health crisis.

Around 3:30 p.m. on Jan. 7, officers from Upper St. Clair arrived at the Shepherd residence to serve a petition to involuntarily commit someone with mental illness.

Shepherd, who had previously been diagnosed with bipolar disorder and schizoaffective disorder, had been hospitalized three times since November. His mother, who had filed the most recent petition, sat in a police car as the officers attempted to take her son into custody.

According to the lawsuit, she told officers there were no guns in the house and that her son was the only person home.

When Upper St. Clair officers knocked on the front door, Shepherd refused to answer. He then pushed a kitchen knife through a plywood board covering a broken window near the front door, the complaint said.

“Mr. Shepherd’s use of the knife was a symptom of his mental health condition — he thought the officers were there to harm him and he used the knife defensively to ward off a perceived threat rather than to assault the officers,” the lawsuit said.

The officers then called the South Hills Area Council of Government’s Critical Incident Response Team, including officers from Baldwin, Bethel Park and Brentwood.

The council is a a nonprofit collaborative of 22 Pittsburgh-area municipalities.

Officers from the team arrived about 5 p.m. and set up a perimeter around the house under Wright’s orders, the lawsuit said. They also evacuated several neighboring houses, the complaint said.

The lawsuit alleges that Wright escalated the encounter about 8:30 p.m., ordering his team to fire less-lethal baton rounds and tear gas through the windows of the home.

It was then that Shepherd exited through the garage door, the complaint said.

“The CIRT [Critical Incident Response Team] officers, who were positioned at the end of the driveway and were a considerable distance from the garage door, shouted at Mr. Shepherd to put up his hands,” the lawsuit said. “Mr. Shepherd ran toward the side of his home, away from the officers. As he was running, several CIRT officers shot Mr. Shepherd eight times in the back and killed him.”

The complaint alleges that the use of deadly force was excessive and that Shepherd did not pose an immediate threat to anyone.

Instead, it continued, the CIRT officers should have used other methods, including bean-bag rounds, a Taser or police dog to take Shepherd into custody.

“Detective Wright’s only ‘plan’ was for the CIRT team to force Mr. Shepherd from his home, shout commands they knew he wouldn’t understand, and then shoot him,” the lawsuit said.

The tactics, it continued, were appropriate for an active shooter or gunman threatening officers.

They were not appropriate, the complaint said, for a man who could not understand what was happening and was not posing an immediate threat.

The three South Hills police chiefs whose officers fatally shot Shepherd told the state Office of Open Records that Allegheny County District Attorney Stephen A. Zappala Jr. has determined the shooting was justified.

Zappala’s office repeatedly declined last month to corroborate those statements.

A message left with the district attorney’s staff late Monday was not immediately returned.