Two men dead after separate police standoffs

Posted on Mon, Jan. 03, 2005
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Two men dead after separate police standoffs

By Jessie Seyfer and Elise Ackerman

Mercury News

A pair of confrontations with police left two San Mateo County men dead Sunday.

In both cases, relatives called 911 to report the men were acting erratically. And in both cases, police used Taser guns, which police hail as less-lethal alternatives to firearms but which are generating nationwide debate about their safety. One man died after being shocked with a Taser, while a second was shot to death after a Taser and other ``less-lethal'' weapons failed to subdue him, according to police.

In Pacifica, police say Greg Saulsbury, 30, died after being stunned with Tasers, which use darts to deliver a 50,000-volt charge.

Saulsbury's family had called 911 to say Saulsbury was having difficulty breathing. His sister, Laneka Saulsbury, told the Mercury News her brother thought people were ``after him'' and that he might have taken some kind of controlled substance.

Police Capt. Jim Tasa said police arrived at the family's home on Inverness Drive shortly after 11:30 p.m. and found Greg Saulsbury ``being combative and uncooperative.'' After a struggle, police tased Saulsbury to subdue him, Tasa said.

Laneka Saulsbury said police also tased her father, Gregory Saulsbury Sr., after he tried to intervene. Laneka Saulsbury, who was not at the house at the time, said police shocked her brother several times, and she denied that he had been resisting arrest.

It was not immediately clear from police how many times Greg Saulsbury had been tased. Officials with the San Mateo County coroner's office said it would be several days until an autopsy could be performed.

A few hours earlier, Redwood City police shot and killed a machete-wielding man Sunday afternoon following an eight-hour standoff on Valota Road during which officers tried Tasers, rubber projectiles and pepper spray to subdue him.

Redwood City police Capt. Scott Warner said the man's family called police about 12:20 p.m. to report that he was acting strangely and had assaulted his nephew. When officers arrived, the man barricaded himself in the closet of a first-floor bedroom.

Officers used pepper spray approximately eight times, tased him at least twice and fired rubber dowels at him as many as 15 times, Warner said. But the approximately 35-year-old man continued to brandish a machete-like knife and to make aggressive movements toward officers, Warner said.

At about 8 p.m., the man allegedly charged through a window at officers. Three members of a multi-agency SWAT team then fired bullets at him, and he died shortly afterward, Warner said.

The county coroner's office is working to confirm the man's identity before releasing it publicly, Warner said, adding that he did not know how many times the man was struck by bullets. All five officers who fired either lethal or less-lethal weapons are on routine paid administrative leave while the police department and district attorney's office conduct a joint investigation into the incident.

The Redwood City Police Department has not purchased Tasers for use by its own officers, but agencies that are part of the area's SWAT team, including Atherton and San Carlos, can employ the devices in SWAT incidents, Warner said.

Police department in San Jose and San Bruno began using Taser guns last year to cut down on injuries to officers and others. But other Bay area police brass are not so confident. Palo Alto, for example, was on the verge of purchasing Tasers, but Chief Lynne Johnson decided to hold off to do more research.

Nationwide, a number of people have died after being shocked with Tasers, and civil rights groups have demanded that police use the weapons only as a last resort. Amnesty International recently released a report calling on law enforcement agencies to suspend their use of Tasers, which the group links to more than 70 deaths in the past four years.