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LUCERNE VALLEY, Calif. () — A High Desert family is expressing shock and disbelief after a 34-year-old was shot and killed by San Bernardino County sheriff’s deputies last week.
Nicholas Keith’s car was left riddled with bullet holes following the shooting, which occurred on May 12 around 12:30 a.m. in the 32000 block of Morse Lane in Lucerne Valley.
Keith’s father said his son struggled with mental illness and questioned deputies’ actions.
“They’re officers. They trained her for this. I think they just took the chicken s— way out,” said Thomas Herrera. “For them to come over and just shoot him, I don’t think that was right.”
“I know my son would have cooperated, but it sounds to me like they didn’t even give him a chance,” said Nicholas’s mother, Kimberly Keith.
According to Keith’s girlfriend, the incident began after the two had an argument. She said she called police seeking help, not expecting it to escalate.
“He wouldn’t leave, so I told him, ‘I’ll call the cops if you don’t leave,’ and he snatched my phone from me and took off. So, I went and grabbed somebody else’s phone and called the non-emergency line to get him help,” she said.
She said that shortly after deputies arrived, Keith returned in his car. She described an attempt by a deputy to remove him from the vehicle.
“It looked like he tried to reach for the door maybe to open it, and that’s when, he reversed again. And he couldn’t go any farther because there were pallets of stuff right there,” she said.
The San Bernardino County Sheriff’s Department said deputies were trying to detain Keith when he reversed his vehicle and struck one of them.
“Deputies attempted to detain Keith, a 34-year-old resident of Lucerne Valley, after he arrived at the location in a vehicle,” read a sheriff’s department press release.
“As deputies attempted to detain him, Keith reversed his vehicle and accelerated, striking a deputy. Two deputies discharged their firearms, and Keith was pronounced deceased at the scene.”
Attorneys representing Keith’s family dispute that account.
“They’re trying to pull him out. He’s got a seat belt on. They don’t seem to acknowledge that,” said attorney James Terrell.
Terrell said deputies fired 15 shots during the encounter and questioned the department’s version of events.
“The statement they’re saying is, if somebody was going to get hit in the rear, our witnesses say there was nobody in the back. We have a problem here,” he said.
The California Department of Justice is investigating the shooting because Keith was unarmed.
“He was not posing a threat to any of the deputies on site. This was a situation where they escalated the situation, they overreacted, and they should have never used lethal force,” said attorney Sharon Brunner.
The investigation remains ongoing.
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