Worth More Dead

“or…[unintelligible]. Go up there.”
    She capitulated by allowing him to drive toward Randy Yoder’s truck. “Go up there,” she said. “Oh, you want to be with the police when you die? Okay. If you tell this guy anything, you’re shot now. [unintelligible] I mean it.”
    Teresa’s voice suddenly sounded weary, accepting that it was all over. “Okay,” she said flatly. “You’re done, and I’m done.”
    There was an unidentifiable sound on the tape, then Rosen’s voice could be heard asking someone, “Are you the police?”
    “Yeah, I’m the police.” It was Randy Yoder’s voice, getting louder as he approached the driver’s window.
    There were more sounds, hard to pinpoint, staticky noises, and voices in the background.
    “Let me see your hands,” Yoder said. “Let me see your hands! Drop the gun. Drop the gun!”
    Now there was chaos on the tape.
    “…the gun…” was the last word before four distinct “pops” sounded.
    Then there was nothing at all. The tape fell out of Teresa’s hands and clattered on the asphalt pavement.
     
    Police officers who have been involved in a shooting are always placed on administrative leave while the event is investigated. While Randy Yoder was being treated in the ER, Captain Joe Padilla and Officer Danny Perez were transported to police headquarters to be questioned and debriefed.
    Under Colorado Revised Statutes, the circumstances under which a peace officer can use deadly force are precisely spelled out: “(1) To defend himself or a third person from what he reasonably believes to be the imminent use of deadly force; or (2) To effect the arrest or to prevent the escape from custody of a person he reasonably believes has committed or attempted to commit a felony or is attempting to escape by the use of a deadly weapon.”
    There are many more subparagraphs, but that is the essence. The State of Colorado doesn’t require a police officer to retreat from an attack rather than use deadly force. It asks only that he take appropriate action to handle a situation.
    The shooting in the parking lot seemed to have lasted an hour, but it was really over in a matter of minutes. Now detectives would try to match the bullets, casings, and fragments to the four people who had apparently fired weapons: Teresa Perez, Captain Joe Padilla, Officer Randy Yoder, and Officer Danny Perez. Joey Perez had not fired his weapon because he did not have a clear view from his position and was afraid he would hit his fellow officers.
     
    The morning after the shooting, October 4, Dr. Thomas Henry, the chief medical examiner for the Denver coroner, did the postmortem exam of Teresa Perez. She had been shot six times. Quite probably, she was struck by rounds from Randy Yoder and Danny Perez, who were trying to stop her from shooting Justyn Rosen, and by Joe Padilla, who was trying to keep her from killing Yoder. One bullet entered her right chest, passed between her ribs and perforated her right lung. It then passed through her diaphragm and liver and fractured her twelfth thoracic vertebra before it came to rest in the soft tissue of her back; this bullet came from Randy Yoder’s gun. Another bullet entered her right lung and also fractured a rib. The third bullet entered the left side of her thorax then passed through her stomach. The fourth entered her left hip, fracturing bones in her lower back, the fifth only grazed her, and the sixth fractured the humerus in her upper right arm.
    Tests for the presence of metabolites from alcohol and cocaine were positive. Teresa’s blood alcohol level was .224, more than twice Colorado’s standard for drunk driving. The cocaine level was not high—704 mg/ml—suggesting that she had ingested a small amount of the drug some time before the shootings and metabolized most of it at the time of her death. There were traces of nicotine and the Benadryl she took in a futile attempt to sleep. None of these results were surprising; Teresa Perez had been a walking emotional time bomb, fueled by drugs and alcohol.
    Oddly, in death Teresa looked more peaceful than she had in the adult years of her life. She had no injuries at all to her face or head. She was still quite beautiful.
    Dr. Henry also did the autopsy on Justyn Rosen’s body. He had been shot fifteen times, so many times that it was impossible to tell if some of the wounds might not have resulted from the same bullets’ entry and exit, and even re-entry, of his body. The fatal