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Cleveland Cop Says He Can't Remember Firing 15 Rounds Into Car While Standing on Hood

Officer Michael Brelo faced the beginning of his trial on Monday for the voluntary manslaughter of two suspects that led police on a 60-car chase in November 2012.
Photo by Tony Dejak/AP

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Opening statements were delivered this morning in the trial of Cleveland police officer Michael Brelo for the shooting deaths of Timothy Russell, 43, and Malissa Williams, 30, who led a stream of police vehicles on a 25-minute high-speed car chase through the city in November 2012 that ended in a hail of gunfire.

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Though 13 officers at the scene shot a total of 137 rounds into the car in less than 30 seconds that night, Brelo, a 31-year-old Iraq war veteran, is the sole officer charged with the killings, facing two counts of voluntary manslaughter. That's because he stood on the hood of Russell's 1979 Chevrolet Malibu and fired 15 rounds into the windshield at least four seconds after everyone else had stopped firing, Cleveland prosecutors said.

The prosecution relayed to the judge and attorneys at Cuyahoga County court that evidence would show that both suspects were alive when Brelo fired his final shots. He faces up to 25 years in prison if found guilty.

Though the officer's footprints were found on the hood of the vehicle, Brelo told investigators afterward that he had no memory of his actions. "I was so terrified that I was going to get run over," he said. "But I don't recall that."

The shooting took place at a middle school parking lot in East Cleveland. An investigation later determined that misinformation and miscommunication precipitated the shooting, including a claim that one or both of the suspects were armed.

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Investigators reported that a loud noise discharged by the vehicle as it passed the Cleveland police headquarters prompted witness reports of gunshots, which were broadcast over police radio to officers who joined the chase. A forensic mechanic later determined that the old car had a propensity to backfire, and at least two officers later said that they heard it backfire while they were in pursuit.

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Investigators determined that officers mistakenly believed the "shots fired" had come from the suspects. Several officers also told investigators that they saw guns at the scene, and one of them relayed this on police radio, stoking the officers' fears.

Brelo claimed that the suspects were attempting to run him over while firing at him, saying he had "never been more afraid in my life."

"I thought my partner and I were being shot and that we were going to be killed," he told investigators, according to the Northeast Ohio Media Group. "The suspect's moving and I could not understand why they are still moving, shooting at us."

Police found no weapon at the scene or along the chase route, and no evidence supports claims that the suspects fired any shots that night.

In front of Brelo and his attorneys on Monday, prosecutors Erica Barnhill and Rick Bell brought out a small-scale model to illustrate the site of what officers later described as a "full blown-out" firefight following the car chase.

Bell then said that Brelo acted unreasonably as he jumped on the hood and fired 15 shots at the suspects, describing it as "the point where [Brelo's] actions became criminal."

"Here the chase had stopped," Bell noted. "The shooting had stopped. The threat was over."

While Brelo told investigators he has no recollection on the incident, the prosecution says another officer will testify that the defendant described the experience of standing on the hood and shooting into the car in a telephone conversation the following day, saying that it was "like being back in Iraq."

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In his countering statement, Brelo's defense attorney Patrick D'Angelo said that it was unclear whether the threat had ceased when the other officers stopped firing. Brelo is said to have fired 15 of the last 18 shots, which D'Angelo argued indicates that at least one other officer still felt threatened. He also noted that the suspects could have disposed of a weapon despite the fact that none was ever found.

Brelo and the other officers were simply acting in response to information they received over the police radio, D'Angelo said. The officer wasn't trying to "be Rambo" in jumping on the hood of the car, he added, but believed he was in actual danger.

The defense noted that police officers are "ordinary people who try to do the best they can, and they're put in some very dangerous situations."

Though Brelo is the only officer charged with the deaths of Russell and Williams, five police supervisors have been indicted for dereliction of duty.

The city of Cleveland has paid $3 million in compensation to Russell and Williams's families in a settlement after the shooting, but the trial of the officer, who was indicted last May, is seen as an attempt to bring more accountability to an embattled police department that was subjected to a US Justice Department review last December. The deadly 2012 car chase was one of numerous incidences that led to the commissioning of the report.

The DOJ report revealed systemic abuses within the department and a pattern of excessive force, sparking a joint federal and city effort to reform the department that is currently underway.