Richard Ward’s video is another example of cops being irresponsible and abusing power given to them by the state. Richard was an innocent man who a Pueblo County sheriff’s deputy fatally shot.
A year ago, Richard was shot and killed outside a middle school after he mistakenly got into the wrong car during school pickup.
The deputy, Charles McWhorter, pulled the 32-year-old Richard Ward from his mother’s car outside Liberty Point International Middle School in Pueblo West on Feb. 22, 2022.
Ward put something in his mouth while McWhorter spoke to him, according to body camera footage released by attorneys representing Ward’s family.
Ward and McWhorter briefly struggled on the ground before McWhorter shot Ward three times in the chest at point-blank range, the video shows.
The footage shows that neither McWhorter nor another deputy on scene, Cassandra Gonzales, provided medical care to Ward as he lay bleeding on the ground.
The video shows that McWhorter didn’t give Ward orders before pulling him from the car and never gave a warning that he was going to use deadly force.
Ward died on the ground outside the school as kids wearing backpacks walked past. The incident lasted two minutes, from first contact to shots fired.
“Richard Ward’s death is a profound injustice, an unarmed, cooperative citizen shot and killed in front of his mother by a Pueblo County sheriff’s deputy. This was nothing short of a state-sanctioned murder of a citizen who should not have been even arrested, let alone killed in broad daylight,” said Darold Killmer, the Ward family’s attorney.
In October, Tenth Judicial District Attorney Jeff Chostner chose not to charge the deputies in connection to Ward’s death because he found they justifiably feared for their lives and acted accordingly.
In interviews with investigators, McWhorter said Ward was grabbing his duty belt and he feared Ward would take his gun.
The deputy approached Ward after a call was made about a suspicious man trying to open car doors.
The incident became worse when Ward put an anti-anxiety medication in his mouth, which McWhorter assumed to be something else. He grabbed Ward by his jacket and pushed him to the ground.
Did Richard Ward receive justice?
A year after Ward’s tragic murder, his family filed a federal lawsuit on Tuesday, February 21st, against the Pueblo County Sheriff’s Office.
“It’s just shattered this whole family,” Kristy Ward Stamp, Ward’s mother, said at a news conference Tuesday afternoon as her attorneys filed the civil lawsuit against Pueblo County.
The family is upset with what the video shows and how the sheriff’s office portrayed the story after the shooting.
Richard’s family filed a lawsuit in hopes of getting him justice and preventing such attacks from happening in the future.
