{"id":415339,"date":"2026-10-01T03:35:05","date_gmt":"2026-10-01T03:35:05","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/415339\/"},"modified":"2026-10-01T03:35:05","modified_gmt":"2026-10-01T03:35:05","slug":"mans-death-during-st-pete-police-struggle-was-excusable-homicide-sheriff-says-2","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/415339\/","title":{"rendered":"Man&#8217;s Death During St. Pete Police Struggle Was &#8216;Excusable Homicide,&#8217; Sheriff Says"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>The task force\u2019s investigation included officer statements, physical and video evidence, witness statements, and the Medical Examiner\u2019s findings, PCSO said.<\/p>\n<p>In his letter to Gualtieri, Bartlett said the officers could have been legally justified in using deadly force because of Pepal\u2019s actions but instead used Tasers and physical restraints to stop the attack.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cThe force used by Officer Poveda and Officer Craig was a reasonable response to the circumstances presented by Brian Pepal\u2019s own actions,\u201d Bartlett wrote. \u201cTherefore, it is the conclusion of the State Attorney\u2019s Office that the death of Brian Pepal was an excusable homicide [under state law.]\u201d<\/p>\n<p>The Pinellas County Use of Deadly Force Investigative Task Force was created in 2020 to independently investigate law enforcement uses of deadly force in the county.<\/p>\n<p>See Also: <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The task force\u2019s investigation included officer statements, physical and video evidence, witness statements, and the Medical Examiner\u2019s findings,&hellip;\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":415340,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[13],"tags":[202,204,203,199,201,200],"class_list":["post-415339","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-st-petersburg","tag-st-pete","tag-st-pete-headlines","tag-st-pete-news","tag-st-petersburg","tag-st-petersburg-headlines","tag-st-petersburg-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/415339","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=415339"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/415339\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/415340"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=415339"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=415339"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=415339"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}