Pierce County will pay $4.5 million to the family of a man shot to death by a deputy after the man tried to flee a welfare check in a minivan parked outside a Spanaway auto parts store.
Jerome Holman, 39, was struck in the shoulder, back, chest, stomach and forearm when deputy Jordan Williams fired six bullets into the minivan’s window on Jan. 27, 2022, court records show.
Deputies said they were scared for their lives after the van reversed, knocking a deputy to the ground, and struck a patrol unit as it performed a U-turn. An attorney representing Holman’s parents and son in a wrongful-death lawsuit argued that evidence showed the deputies were not in danger and unnecessarily escalated what should have been a routine call.
More than two months after the lawsuit was filed, the Pierce County Prosecuting Attorney’s Office determined that Williams was justified in using lethal force and found “there was no reasonably effective alternative” to preventing the threat posed to deputies by Holman’s operation of the van.
The county has since agreed to pay $4.5 million to settle the lawsuit brought last year by Holman’s parents and 15-year-old son. The settlement — which typically assert that a defendant is not admitting to liability — was finalized on Nov. 15, according to court records.
“There was a measure of justice that comes with a settlement like this, and that — (the plaintiffs) feel good about, but the hope is that they can stop these unnecessary shootings from occurring in the future,” attorney Jack Connelly, who represented Holman’s family, said in an interview Monday.
Sheriff Ed Troyer told The News Tribune that he had only learned of the settlement on Monday.
“The deputies followed their training,” Troyer said.
Troyer expressed relief that no deputies were killed or injured and noted that body-worn cameras, which captured the incident, were the best thing that ever happened to law enforcement because they capture what occurs from a law enforcement perspective. He said that the county had to weigh what a jury might have thought, particularly any jurors who were unfamiliar with police work. Troyer acknowledged the incident could be seen as “quite upsetting.”
“It’s not nearly as sanitized as television,” the sheriff told The News Tribune, adding that deputies encounter dangerous situations nightly.
A spokesperson for the Prosecuting Attorney’s Office declined to comment on the case’s resolution. In a court filing last year, the county denied all allegations of wrongdoing.
Call turns deadly
The encounter began as a welfare check that led deputies to learn Holman’s driving privileges were suspended, find apparent drug paraphernalia and suspect the van was stolen due to mismatched license plate and vehicle identification numbers, according to authorities. Connelly previously said there was no clarity on whether the van was stolen and, even if true, it didn’t warrant what occurred.
The manager of an O’Reilly Auto Parts in the 14900 block of Pacific Avenue South reported to the Sheriff’s Department that Holman was lingering in his van with his head slumped over. He had been sleeping after exchanging text messages with his father between roughly 4:40 p.m. and 5:16 p.m, including about buying items for an oil change, the lawsuit said.
Holman was awakened by knocks on the driver-side door. Three deputies shined flashlights inside the vehicle. For five minutes, until roughly 5:56 p.m., Holman and deputy Devin Ditsch had a peaceful verbal exchange, the lawsuit said.
Holman was unarmed, according to the lawsuit. Authorities said there was a pocket knife clipped to Holman’s pants pocket and a hammer beside him in the van, but it was not alleged that he grabbed for either.
For reasons unclear, Holman started the van, attempted to close the driver-side door and began to back out of the parking lot. Ditsch, then a trainee, pried the door open, ran alongside the van, reached in through the open door and attempted to pull Holman out before tumbling to the ground and out of the path of the reversing vehicle, according to the lawsuit.
The suit claimed Holman was trying “to get away from the unreasonable and unnecessary inquisition.”
The van backed up for 20 more feet and swiped a patrol unit as it nearly finished a U-turn. Holman was shot in rapid succession through a passenger window, causing him to fall out of the vehicle and onto the ground while guns-drawn deputies yelled for him to stop moving, the suit said.
Law enforcement investigators said shortly after the shooting that Ditsch had been dragged and thrown to the ground a distance of about 30 feet and that Holman had narrowly avoided hitting Ditsch.
“He then positioned his vehicle in such a way that had he accelerated, the deputies were at risk of being struck,” the Pierce County Force Investigation Team said in a statement in February 2022.
Holman was pronounced dead at a local hospital less than three hours after the shooting, according to the suit, which was transferred from King County to Pierce County Superior Court in June 2023.
Imminent threat?
Ditsch and Williams both said they were afraid for their lives, according to their written statements submitted through a union attorney before returning to work. Williams believed he was in the vehicle’s path and was unsure whether Ditsch was still in the path after being knocked to the ground, court records filed by Holman’s family said.
In a July 2023 interview with The News Tribune, Connelly said that body-worn camera footage showed deputies were not in peril. The lawsuit claimed that Holman had distanced himself from the deputies and that Williams “panicked” as he fired without warning.
The News Tribune reviewed body-worn camera footage from the incident. It showed that Ditsch was not dragged and he almost immediately rolled back to his feet and ran behind a curb, The News Tribune previously reported. The footage also showed that no deputies appeared to be directly in the path of the van.
Troyer pointed to the prosecutors’ account, clearing Williams of wrongdoing. He also noted the dangers of the job. Two deputies have died in the line of duty in the nearly four years since he has been sheriff, and four others were killed during his time with the department’s media team, beginning about 21 years ago, he said.
The Sheriff’s Department’s use-of-force policy, which notes that shooting at a moving vehicle is “rarely effective,” requires deputies to move out of its path, when feasible, rather than shoot at the operator.
A deputy may not fire upon a moving vehicle except when it’s deemed necessary to protect against “an imminent threat of serious bodily injury” resulting from use of a deadly weapon, the policy says. A vehicle is only considered a deadly weapon if “the operator is using the vehicle as a deadly weapon and no other reasonable means to avoid potential serious harm are immediately available to the deputy.”
A toxicology report after Holman’s death showed he had methamphetamine and fentanyl in his system although investigative documents didn’t show that deputies reported signs of impairment.
A deputy on scene identified “some tin foil with some brown stuff on it underneath” Holman inside the van prior to the shooting, according to body-worn camera footage. Investigators reported recovering a glass pipe and foil but didn’t document finding drugs.
Connelly said Monday he believed the settlement signaled that there was no reason for the shooting. He pointed to Holman’s family and teen son who have been left behind to grieve and said that deputies should be trained so they don’t so quickly resort to deadly force.
Asked whether he believed the settlement would effectuate any changes, Connelly replied: “There’s hope.”
