Man disputes deputy’s version of shooting

Associated Press

SEATTLE — The son of a man fatally shot by an off-duty sheriff’s deputy said Wednesday that the deputy refused to identify himself before firing three rounds into the father’s parked pickup truck.

Robert Lee Thomas Jr. 39, also said he never saw his father pull a gun and point it at the officer, as the sheriff’s office contends.

Sobbing during a news conference in lawyer Bradley Marshall’s Seattle office, the younger Thomas said, "My dad didn’t need to go that way. I don’t know what this guy’s problem was. He didn’t have to shoot me or my dad."

Robert Lee Thomas Sr., 59, died Sunday of a gunshot wound to the chest. His son suffered two gunshot wounds to his right hand and said he may lose his right index finger. Thomas Jr.’s 40-year-old girlfriend, Gina Munnell, who was sitting in the back of the extended-cab truck, was not injured.

Marshall said he wanted to give the son a chance to air his version of events. He questioned King County Sheriff Dave Reichert’s statement that Deputy Melvin Miller apparently had no choice but to shoot, based on the deputy’s assertion that the elder Thomas had pointed a gun at him.

"When something tragic like this occurs, it’s important to wait until the investigation is complete before you say who was right and who was wrong," Marshall said.

A call for comment was not immediately returned late Wednesday by sheriff’s officers.

Reichert, reached Tuesday in Washington, D.C., told a Seattle newspaper he had spoken with Miller and his support was "based on the preliminary facts."

Thomas was black; Miller is white.

"This case is not about race," Marshall said. "This is about a person who got killed."

Miller, who is on paid leave pending completion of the investigation, had not yet completed a formal statement outlining his version of events as of late Wednesday afternoon, Dymerski said.

Although Thomas Jr. insisted his father did not brandish a gun, a stolen .40-caliber Glock semiautomatic pistol was recovered from the pickup, Dymerski said. It did not appear to have been fired.