Temple City Sheriff Wrong House Seconds Before Killing Homeowner
Robert Dotson was killed after police in Farmington, New Mexico, said he opened the door late April 5 with a handgun. Officers responding to a call were at the wrong address. Continue reading for further news. Video shows police at the wrong house before the fatal shooting of a homeowner in New Mexico. Farmington, New Mexico police officers discussed whether they were at the right house moments before the door opened and they fatally shot an armed homeowner, body camera video released Friday appears to show.
Temple City Sheriff Wrong House
The officers were at the wrong address in the April 5 incident that left the homeowner, 52-year-old Robert Dotson, dead, Police Chief Steve Hebbe has said. Farmington police on Friday released six videos from the encounter- one from each of the three officers who responded as well as slow-motion videos from each- and one video on Facebook with parts of the three. Each video from the officers is around 20 minutes long.
In a statement, on Friday, Hebbe said that once again they wish to express their condolences to the Dotson family, and as a chief of police, he wishes to convey how sorry he is for whatever has happened. The New Mexico State Police are investigating the shooting. The agency and Farmington police said officers were to respond to a domestic violence-related call at one house around 11:30 pm. But the officers mistakenly went to another house, which appears to be across the street, according to the officials.
The video released on Friday shows an officer knocking on the door at the wrong address three times and pretending to be a police official. The officer knocking on the door and another officer not shown are heard discussing the address in one of the videos. The knocking officer appears to laugh after being told the correct address and then says an expletive as the door starts to open The video shows the officer backing up and shining a flashlight at the now-opening door.
The video records her pleading for help and her children are upstairs. Someone on the police radio says there are three children in the home upstairs. The video shows Dotson on the ground in a robe inside that home and a handgun on the floor next to him. All three officers who were there fired their weapons during the incident. The police said that the number of shots they fired is under investigation. Police revealed that Dotson’s family along with their lawyer, watched the videos at the San Juan County District lawyer’s office before it was released publicly Friday.
State police said that its findings in the shooting investigation will be shared with the district attorney’s office and the DA’s office will determine if the shooting was justified. Farmington is a city of around 46,000 in the northwestern part of the state. Thank you for being a patient reader.
