Family files amended civil complaint against state police in 2018 Forward Twp man’s death
State police had nonlethal weapons with them when they shot killed a 73-year-old Forward Township man with Alzheimer’s disease who had an unloaded rifle in his yard on Sept. 18, 2018, according to an amended civil complaint his family filed against the police.
The amended complaint filed in U.S. District Court in Pittsburgh also claims troopers manipulated the wife and daughter of the late Walter Weimann into signing an involuntary mental health commitment form as a guise to authorize them enter the property.
In addition, the new complaint filed last week by Butler attorney Alexander Lindsay on behalf of Weimann’s daughters, Tammi Kaufman and Kimberly Weimann, and Weimann’s wife, Karen Weimann, names nine state police troopers as defendants.
Kaufman said she obtained some of the new information filed in the amended complaint from documents she received from police through the discovery process including part of a video of the incident recorded by a state police helicopter that circled above the scene.
“I don’t want this to happen to someone else. If I knew what they would do, I wouldn’t have called,” Kaufman said Friday. “Watching the video was horrible. I saw him in his last moments of life. He looked confused. He deserved better than getting gunned down by police in his yard.”
She called 911 on Sept. 18, 2018, two days after he became upset and confused when he discovered the beehives in his barn didn't contain any bees. He forgot that he and other family members cleaned the hives and burned the remains during the summer due to a mite infestation. His mood fluctuated over the next two days, but he stayed awake until about 4 a.m. Sept. 18 watching the hives from the deck of his house.
While Kaufman was on the phone with her father’s doctor to arrange a prescription for medication to calm him, her mother called and said he was upset again and opened a locked gun cabinet and removed an unloaded hunting rifle. Kaufman told her mother to leave the home and they met at Connoquenessing Park, where she called 911.
A trooper and a representative from the Center for Community Resources Crisis Center met Kaufman and her mother at the park, where the trooper told them police would treat the incident as a criminal matter due to possible threats to neighbors unless they signed the Section 302 mental health commitment form, Kaufman said.
“They presented the 302 as a way to protect him and that he wouldn’t be hurt. I don’t think they could have entered the property without that because there was no aggression shown by him. We feel we were manipulated. They just used it to get access to the property,” Kaufman said.
Instead of following state police protocols for dealing with people with mental health issues, police launched what the complaint called a “full-scale military style assault and siege” at the home on Nursery Road. It began around noon and ended when he was shot around 3:45 p.m. after he walked into the yard carrying the rifle. The complaint says no less than 17 troopers with no less than 30 documented weapons, an armored vehicle and a helicopter responded to Weimann’s home.
According to the complaint, Cpl. Brian Raymond Lumsden and Trooper Brian Stephen Palko fired the gunshots that killed Weimann. They and one other trooper had nonlethal weapons with them in addition to their handguns and rifles, the complaint said.
About 45 minutes before the shooting, Capt. Steve Ignantz signed orders for Standard Rules of Engagement, authorizing the use of deadly force for the protection of self and others, according to the complaint. No report of aggressive behavior by Weimann had been made, and communication with Weimann was never established, according to the complaint.
Lumsden and Palko told a corporal who investigated the incident that Weimann was “a good shot,” according to the suit.
“It should be noted that at no time did plaintiffs describe Walter as a good shot to any PSP officer, and in fact, it had been at least 20 years since Walter had last removed the hunting rifle from its locked cabinet. Kaufman had also informed PSP officers that Walter had severe cataracts,” the suit said.
“It just shows the information and the intelligence they were building against my dad was fabricated to make him look like an angry person that he wasn't,” Kaufman said.
Kaufman said she hopes that police provide a missing half-hour segment of the video recorded from the helicopter to help her understand how the barn on her parents’ property caught fire during the incident.
Ignatz, Lumsden, Palko, Corporals Timothy Morando, Greg Bogan and Brian King and Troopers Mark A. Benson, Richard Giustini and Clinton C. Painter are named as defendants in their individual capacities in the complaint.
Kaufman said she wants Judge W. Scott Hardy to allows the case to proceed to a jury trial. She said her ultimate goal is to prevent a repeat of what happened to her father from happening to someone else.
The original complaint the family filed against police was dismissed in October 2021. Hardy granted limited discovery in February this year. The amended complaint was filed last week.
