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Suit filed against city for accidental shooting incident
By Zach Markovic, zmarkovic@acnpapers.com
The city of Plano faces a lawsuit levied by the family of the man who was accidentally shot and killed by a Plano police sergeant in October.
The lawsuit was announced Tuesday during a press conference by attorney Miller Weisbrod, and filed in the district court in Collin County on behalf of the mother and the spouse of Michael Alcala, a Carrollton man, who was accidentally shot and killed by a Plano Police Department officer.
The officer, who was a part of an undercover narcotics unit, has not been identified yet and is still on administrative leave as the police continue with an internal investigation stemming from the incident.
On Oct. 13 Alcala was shot and killed in the parking lot of the Jack-in-the-Box fast food restaurant located at the northeast corner of the North Dallas Tollway and Frankford Road.
According to affidavits obtained from the Dallas Police Department the officer had his firearm, a Springfield .40-caliber semi-automatic pistol, drawn on Alcala when the officer attempted to illuminate a SureFire X300 flashlight mounted on the gun. In the process he accidentally discharged his weapon. The shot struck Alcala in the chest, who would later die from the wound at a hospital.
“This has been devastating to my entire family,” Saldana said. “When [my daughter] told me that he was dead I could not believe it. I still have a hard time believing it today and it has been hard on all of the family members. Now we just visit him at the cemetery instead of being able to talk to him a couple times a week.”
Saladana made her intentions clear during the press conference. She wants that light off the market so that other families do not have to go through the same grief as she.
“It could happen to anyone,” she said.
The Plano Police Department started using the new lights last summer. A different model used before was the SureLIght X200 which had a on/off mechanism on the handle of the gun. The new model, the SureLight X300 has a switch that is near the trigger that can be activated by flipping the switch up and down with the tip of the trigger finger.
“We only filed suit against the city at this time because it is clear that the officer was negligent in firing the gun instead of turning on the light,” Weisbrod said. “The officer has responded that the negligence is in part due to his lack of training and part to the department policy that mandated the light had to be on the gun. It appears to me that he believes it is a defective design.”
Weisbrod said he believes no other police agencies in the area use that type of flashlight mount. He said the issue goes beyond the officer’s accidental firing of a weapon. It is an issue of policies where Plano police mandated the use of what appears to be a defective light model for officers and to the manufacturer for developing a defective product, Weisbrod said.
“Certainly the officer has a role in the accident,” he said “It seems to me though that on a larger scale the city of Plano and its policy and the design by the manufacturer are really at fault here, more than the officer.”
While the affidavits allege Alcala had come to the area to meet in a setup by the narcotics unit for a heroin sale and then arrest, Weisbrod said it should be pointed out that according to those affidavits Alcala had no weapon on him, was not threatening the officers and was not found to have drugs in his possession.
And in the aftermath of this incident there is a grieving family, an officer on administrative leave still pending internal investigation by the Plano police and a 2-year-old boy who now has to visit his father at a cemetery.
”I know my son is young, but he could tell something was different those first days after the accident,” Nava said. “We don’t want something like this to happen to someone else. We all miss him and hope that we will see some kind of justice.”
No criminal charges were brought against the officer as the county did not believe there was sufficient evidence to constitute criminal charges.
The suit states that through its officer who shot and killed Alcala, the city of Plano was negligent of: failure to control a firearm; discharging a firearm when he did not intend to; discharging a firearm when he was illuminating a flashlight; and/or other negligent actions and/or omissions.
The suit asks for an unspecified amount of actual damages plus court costs for the family’s pain and suffering and medical and burial expenses and for his son’s loss of love and companionship due to his father’s death.
The Plano Police Department would not comment on the incident because of the investigation and pending lawsuit.
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