Estimated read time: 5-6 minutes
- A disabled teen, Victor Perez, was shot by Pocatello police officers.
- Conflicting accounts of the incident emerged, with witnesses describing excessive force.
- Perez's family reports he remains in critical condition after multiple surgeries.
POCATELLO — After a 17-year-old was shot multiple times by four Pocatello police officers, officers and observers are giving conflicting versions of events.
Multiple police officers shot Victor Perez Saturday evening on the 700 block of North Harrison Avenue.
Family members tell EastIdahoNews.com that doctors removed nine bullets from his body and that due to the shooting, he had to have his left leg amputated. On Monday afternoon, they said that Perez was still in "critical condition" at Portneuf Medical Center in Pocatello.
Ana Vazquez, Perez's aunt, said the boy has cerebral palsy and a mental handicap, which significantly impairs his movement and makes him primarily nonverbal. Perez's family is Puerto Rican and speak limited English.
Video of the shooting was widely circulated on social media Sunday.
Video of the incident was sent to EastIdahoNews.com by multiple people, showing Perez lying on the ground outside of a home in a yard. He appears to be holding a knife and is arguing with a woman, who tries to get the item from Perez's hands and repeatedly pushes him down to the ground.
Police arrived at 5:25 p.m., according to a police news release, and four officers rushed out of their vehicles with guns drawn.
Neighbors see the shooting
The video shows officers yelling at Perez and telling him to drop his weapon. The officers were in front of a chain-link fence, not in the yard, where Perez was. Perez appears to stand up and moves toward the officers. The officers then fired multiple shots.
EastIdahoNews.com spoke with Brad Andres, who filmed the video of the incident that has been circulating social media. He said he and his son Bridger Andres were working on a car in their nearby shop when he stepped outside to take a call.
"I looked over across the street at the neighbors, and it looked like family members just playing in the backyard, it looked like play knife fighting because everyone was moving sort of slow, and nobody was really scared of the guy with the knife," says Andres.
At first, Andres didn't think much of it but noticed that Perez seemed to be physically disabled, and he says at first, he thought he was drunk. He later learned that Perez has special needs.
Suddenly, Andres says he saw a man near Perez try and "swing" at the knife in his hand.
"The (man) took a swing at (Perez's) hand with the knife, trying to knock it out," says Andres. "I'm watching this, and I'm going, 'Wow, something's going on here.'"
'It looked sketchy'
At this point, Andres says he called out to his son to watch the incident with him while he finished his phone call. During the incident, Andres says he saw a "log" in the hands of the man near Perez but never saw him strike him.
According to Andres, Bridger watched from the window inside the shop and also saw Perez swinging a knife around.
"(Perez) is up with the knife, and he's swinging it around," says Andres. "He's not lunging and trying to stab somebody; he's more swinging it around sort of in a circle that 'if you get near me, you're going to get cut.'"
A woman was also near Perez, seemingly trying to disarm him. As Perez appeared to continue swinging the knife around, the father and son called 911.
Andres says he turned around for a second, and when he looked back, Perez was on the ground, and the log was near him.
"It looked sketchy. There's a knife, there's things in danger, so my son made the correct call to call 911 with the goal of helping his neighbor with this situation," says Andres. "Dispatch may have exaggerated something, because this wasn't a knife fight. Nobody would have been stabbed. Nobody was in immediate danger."
'They all unloaded'
When the police arrived at the house, Andres says the man near Perez made a hand motion to the officers, describing it as what he would interpret as, "We're over here, don't panic, this isn't a big deal."
"The cops had run up, and when (the woman) was in the lawn next to Perez, she started yelling 'No! No! No!' and put her hands up with the body language saying, 'No, you don't need to come over here,' to stop the police. They ignored her," says Andres.
Andres says police did not make contact with the man or woman near Perez.
"Instead, they rushed the fence in an aggressive way and pulled their guns out, and pointed them at (Perez) on the ground," says Andres. "He saw everybody pointing guns at him, so he stood up and pointed the knife toward the officers. After the officers saw this, they all unloaded."
According to Andres, the officers continued to shoot even after Perez had already been shot and was on the ground.
"You can see that the kid, after he was shot, wounded and down on the ground in pain, suffering from the shots, they continued to shoot at him," says Andres. "If you look at the video I took, you can see the dirt being kicked up, and that was a couple of frames into (Perez) being down."
At that point, Andres and his son stopped recording and returned to the shop.
The last 48 hours have been tough for Andres and his son Bridger, they say, as they try to come to terms with the fact that this incident occurred.
"We don't know how to handle this. We've never seen a video that is so extreme," says Andres. "It's the most graphic video I've ever seen of police abuse ever. I mean, there's no excuse for it."
