DA rules on Durham police officers who shot suspect fleeing in reported stolen car

Durham County District Attorney Satana Deberry announced Thursday her office will not pursue criminal charges against two Durham police officers who shot a suspect in a reported stolen car last winter.

According to a Wednesday letter to Police Chief Patrice Andrews, officers Richard Villareal Gamboa Jr. and Brittany Nicole Vasquez used lawful, or reasonable, force when they shot Ahmmon X. Fishe on Jan. 12, 2023. He survived the shooting.

Here is what police say happened, according to Deberry’s letter and a previous News & Observer report.

Around 3 a.m., officers found a man asleep in a car outside a hotel on Front Street. He woke up and tried to drive off by “reversing his vehicle,” police stated in a news release.

At 4:47 a.m., officers saw the car, which had been reported stolen from Greensboro, at Duke Manor Apartments on South LaSalle Street.

“DPD officers surrounded the vehicle, identified themselves as law enforcement, and shouted for Fishe to exit,” Deberry stated in her letter.

“Fishe started the vehicle and put it into reverse, hitting a DPD vehicle,” the letter continued. “Fishe then put the car into drive and proceeded to drive in the direction where multiple DPD officers were standing.”

In their release, police said two officers determined another officer was “in imminent danger of serious bodily injury or death” and fired at the car, striking the man in the left shoulder and arm. The man got out, and officers chased him and took him into custody.

Deberry identified the officers in her letter as Gamboa and Vasquez. She said Vasquez discharged her rifle and Gamboa, his Glock 17 handgun. Both said they feared threat of imminent harm to themselves and the other officers at the scene, according to the letter.

Fishe was taken to Duke University Hospital for treatment and “corroborated the accounts of the incident at the scene,” the letter stated.

‘Reasonably necessary’

Deberry said the law requires her to evaluate whether the officers used excessive force when they fired on Fishe.

“The question, therefore, is whether a reasonable officer in Ofcs. Gamboa and Vasquez positions would have felt that it was ‘“reasonably necessary’ to use deadly force to defend themselves and other officers from what they reasonably believed to be the use or imminent use of deadly physical force by Mr. Fishe in his attempt to flee and elude arrest,” she wrote.

“The evidence from this investigation establishes that a reasonable officer in Gamboa and Vasquez’s positions would have believed that both they and their colleagues were in danger of imminent deadly physical force from the vehicle driven by Fishe,” she wrote.

Staff writers Kristen Johnson and Virginia Bridges contributed to this report.

This story was originally published July 13, 2023 at 4:26 PM.