WARNING, GRAPHIC: Colorado family to file lawsuit after deadly shooting involving the Pueblo County Sheriff’s Office

PUEBLO COUNTY, Colo. (KKTV) - WARNING: The video at the top of this article is graphic. It was provided to the media by Killmer, Lane & Newman, LLP. It shows the deadly encounter.

The family of a man shot and killed by law enforcement last year is preparing to file a lawsuit in connection with his death. The deadly shooting was justified by the 18th Judicial District Attorney’s Office. You can read the report from the 18th Judicial District Attorney at the bottom of this article.

Richard Ward, 32, was fatally shot outside Liberty Point International Middle School in Pueblo West in February 2022. The Pueblo County Sheriff’s Office said after the shooting that Ward was seen banging on car doors outside of the middle school, and a witness, thinking he was drunk or on drugs, alerted administrators. The school principal reportedly confronted Ward and told him to wait in his car while deputies were contacted. The sheriff’s office said Ward exited the vehicle after deputies arrived and allegedly began fighting with them, including head-butting one deputy and breaking his nose.

Ward was shot after allegedly trying to disarm one of the deputies.

In response to the shooting, Ward’s family is filing a federal civil rights wrongful death lawsuit, their attorney’s office announced Tuesday. a replay of the news conference can be viewed at the bottom of this article, below the DA’s report.

“Mr. Ward was unarmed and presented no danger whatsoever to Deputy McWhorter, his partner Deputy Cassandra Gonzalez, or anyone else. Nevertheless, McWhorter inflicted grossly excessive force on Richard, pulling him out of his mother’s car while they waited outside of his younger brother’s middle school and throwing him to the ground, and inside of a minute shooting him three times in the chest, killing him,” part of a statement from the law firm representing Ward’s family reads. “The killing of an unarmed man, in broad daylight right in front of his mother, is yet another senseless killing by aggressive law enforcement officers poorly trained to handle even the most routine police tasks without resorting to dangerous and even deadly weapons.”

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