A Pittsburg police officer testified Friday that he looked down the barrel of a gun before firing the first in what became a barrage of gunshots at a Pittsburg apartment complex last year that killed a Brentwood man.
Officer John Odell, now with the Moraga Police Department, fired shots along with Officer Gregory Simpson on May 20, 2021, after responding to the complex in the 2300 block of Loveridge Road on reports that a man with a gun was banging on a woman’s door.
Patrick Watkins, 31, died at scene. The woman was his ex-girlfriend and was inside the apartment with her child and boyfriend.
Authorities later identified Simpson and Odell as the two officers who fired. Both testified Friday at a coroner’s inquest into the shooting. Watkins was ruled to have died at the hands of another person, a legal classification of homicide that does not indicate any criminal responsiblity.
Odell said he followed Watkins up a staircase and could clearly see Watkins holding a gun behind his right shoulder.
“He’s perpendicular to me,” Odell said. “As I’m looking to the right side, he begins to raise a black-and-silver handgun and the barrel is pointed at me. The gun comes across his chest. He’s in the process of trying to shoot me. I fire three times.”
Odell testified that he’d gone up the only staircase in that particular part of the complex after coming across Watkins at the bottom of the stairs. Two other patrol cars went to the rear end of the complex; Simpson’s patrol car followed Odell into the north side.
In testimony consistent with video footage from three body-worn cameras that was shown at the inquest, Odell said Watkins refused commands not to go up the stairs, instead backpedaling up and back into a hallway with no apartments behind him but doors to units on either side of him.
“He starts to fall, I try to get cover on the staircase,” Odell said “I fire three more rounds. While I’m on the ground adjusting my gun, I can hear more gunshots.”
Simpson testified he “clearly saw (Watkins’) firearm,” and that after the first gunshot followed quickly by two others ones, he saw Odell on the staircase.
“I thought Odell was hit,” Simpson said. “I kept going up the stairs, I saw him, I saw the gun still pointed at us. He was in this gap (of the hallway) where I felt it was safe to fire without (bullets) going into another apartment.”
Simpson said after the second shot, Watkins stopped moving. Both he and Odell both testified that after the shooting, the gun barrel was pointed in their direction. Both could see Watkins breathing occasionally, they testified, and the gun stayed pointed at officers through a 40-minute standoff.
“We pleaded with him to take his (finger) off that trigger,” Watkins testified.
The gun Watkins held — a Walther .22 caliber — was unloaded, but a live round was found next to him, police said.
Officers eventually approached with a barrier and shot Watkins with less-than-lethal beanbag ammunition, an approach deemed necessary, Odell said, “to make sure he’s not going to ambush us.”
“There wasn’t really much of a reaction” by Watkins to being hit by the bean bags, Odell said. “At that point, police officers moved in and he was removed from his firearm.”
Video of the incident — edited and released by the Pittsburg Police Department — can be viewed on YouTube. Viewer discretion is advised.
Source: www.mercurynews.com