While a former Auburn police officer is serving 16 years in prison for murder in one shooting, prosecutors have cleared him of wrongdoing in another.
In a memo issued Thursday, King County prosecutors say Jeffrey Nelson was justified in using deadly force in 2017 when he shot and killed 25-year-old Isaiah Obet in Auburn as Obet, armed with a pocketknife, was allegedly trying to force his way into a vehicle he had stopped in the middle of the street.
Nelson, 46, is serving a prison term after a King County jury convicted him in June of second-degree murder and first-degree assault for the 2019 shooting death of Jesse Sarey, who Nelson was arresting for investigation of misdemeanor disorderly conduct.
Nelson is the first police officer in Washington state history to be convicted of murder for killing someone during an arrest.
Similar shootings, different conclusions
Nelson claimed Sarey, 26, tried to grab his gun as they scuffled outside an Auburn market on May 31, 2019, and feared Sarey had gotten hold of a folding utility knife from his police vest and was going to stab him. Nelson shot Sarey in the torso at point-blank range and, as Sarey slipped to the ground, witnesses said Nelson fired a second shot into his head.
King County prosecutors charged Nelson in Sarey's killing in 2020 under the provisions of Initiative 940, a citizens' initiative which took effect the previous year. Its passage changed the legal standard under which police can be charged for a killing — removing language that required a jury to find an officer acted with "malice" in order to convict, a burden which prosecutors have said was virtually impossible to meet.
Senior King County Deputy Prosecutor Joseph Marchesano, with the office's Public Integrity Unit, noted Obet's killing occurred before the passage of I-940.
Marchesano said in an interview that a review of the investigation and statements from four civilian eyewitnesses — including the terrified woman whose car Obet was trying to force his way into — led him to conclude that Nelson had cause to believe Obet posed an imminent threat to the driver and others in the area. He responded by first loosing his police dog on Obet and then shooting him twice — once in the chest and then in the head.
Marchesano's conclusions were presented to and approved by King County Prosecuting Attorney Leesa Manion.
In his 12 years as an Auburn officer, Nelson was involved in three fatal shootings and a number of questionable uses of force that were entered as evidence of a violent approach to policing.
Marchesano said he recognized the similarities between the Sarey and Obet shootings and that he took into account Nelson's history of using force.
Prosecutors in Nelson's murder trial hired former interim Seattle police Chief Jim Pugel to review Nelson's use of force history. Pugel found 17 instances where he thought Nelson used excessive or unconstitutional levels of force during arrests, and 10 of those were introduced for consideration at Nelson's sentencing.
Marchesano noted Obet's shooting was not among them.
"A threat of serious physical harm"
On June 10, 2017, Nelson and other Auburn officers responded to a neighborhood after a woman called 911 reporting a man armed with a pocketknife had walked into her apartment and asked for money. She told him to leave, and he did.
Two minutes later and a few houses away, dispatchers received a second call, this one involving a nine-year-old child who had asked neighbors to call police because a man with a knife had walked up to their car as they pulled into their driveway and threatened his mother with a knife. The woman's husband picked up a bat that was in the yard and chased him away.
Officers set up a perimeter and called for a K-9 officer — Nelson and his K-9 partner, Koen — who spotted Obet walking down a street. Seeing Nelson, Obet ran into the street, stopped an SUV and pounded on the driver's side window with his fists while holding a knife, according to witnesses.
Four civilian witnesses provided statements to officers and Marchesano acknowledged their stories differ, though "all generally described Obet trying to get into" the woman's car.
A statement taken from the driver described her as "extremely shaken" and crying. "[The witness] stated she was in fear that Obet would open the door and stab her."
Nelson, in a statement he made to another officer at the scene, said he spotted Obet walking the other direction on 21st Street Southeast in Auburn. Nelson said he turned around and Obet "turns and laughs and smiles at me, runs into the middle of the street and tries to carjack this chick. He has a knife in his hand, starts pulling the door handle, and then this chick is losing her mind."
"I send the dog, he turns, he comes at me, and then I, you know, because the dog's not going to stop him. So I put one in him and then on the way down a second," Nelson said.
Nelson announced "shots fired" six minutes after the first 911 call of Obet walking into the woman's apartment.
Marchesano, in his analysis of the shooting and applicable law, found an investigation conducted by the Valley Independent Investigative Team "showed there was probable cause for (Officer Nelson) to believe that Obet committed or was in the process of committing various felonies, such as residential burglary and assault."
"Second, given the description of Obet, the proximity to the other 911 calls, there was probable cause to believe that Obet, if not apprehended, posed a threat of serious physical harm" to the driver of the car.
"The evidence ... would support a jury finding that (Nelson) used deadly force with a good faith belief that his actions were justifiable and without malice," the legal standard in place at the time, Marchesano concluded.
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