Daniel Sanchez did exactly what he was trained to do.\u00a0<\/p>\n
That was the message the Austin police officer’s defense attorneys sought to drive home Wednesday as they opened their case in a jury trial stemming from Sanchez\u2019s fatal shooting three years ago of tech entrepreneur Rajan Moonesinghe.<\/p>\n
Testimony from various witnesses affirmed the notion that Sanchez\u2019s split-second decision to open fire on Moonesinghe in November 2022 was a reasonable \u2014 and trained \u2014 response to what he perceived as an immediate threat.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe would not train our officers to stop and see if a suspect will murder them,\u201d Jonathan Slayton, a former firearms and control-tactics instructor at the Austin Police Academy who trained Sanchez, testified during cross-examination.<\/p>\n
Sanchez was the first officer to arrive at Moonesinghe\u2019s Bouldin Creek duplex after a neighborhood security guard called 911. When Sanchez pulled up, Moonesinghe had fired two rounds from an AR-15 rifle into his own house.<\/p>\n
Slaton said the academy trains officers to treat such confirmed gunfire as an active-shooter situation even if the shooter stops firing, so Moonesinghe\u2019s two shots followed by a pause would still trigger an active-shooter response.\u00a0<\/p>\n
Body-camera and doorbell video played in court shows Sanchez shouting for Moonesinghe to drop his weapon without identifying himself as police. Less than a second later, Sanchez opened fire.<\/p>\n
Several Austin police officials, including those in the department\u2019s chain of command, testified that Sanchez\u2019s actions did not violate the Police Department\u2019s use-of-force policy. They said the officer likely believed he was confronting an active shooter, and that Moonesinghe\u2019s \u201clow-ready\u201d stance \u2014 holding a rifle pointed toward the ground \u2014 can still signal a threat under department training.<\/p>\n
\u201cAction will always beat reaction,\u201d said Jeffrey Woodward, a 19-year Police Department veteran who also trained Sanchez at the police academy. Officers are taught to respond immediately when someone holds a rifle in that position, he said, because it takes only a moment to raise and fire.<\/p>\n
Police Department Chief of Staff Robin Henderson, who was serving as interim chief at the time of the shooting, outlined how the department\u2019s use-of-force policy is created and updated. The process involves multiple layers of review, she said, and instructors are prohibited from teaching tactics not allowed under the policy.<\/p>\n
Henderson also stood by her earlier public statement that Sanchez acted \u201cconsistent with his training,\u201d though she acknowledged under cross-examination that it\u2019s uncommon for a police chief to publicly support an officer facing criminal charges.<\/p>\n
The prosecution rested its case Monday after presenting video footage, forensic evidence and emotional testimony from Moonesinghe\u2019s family.<\/p>\n
Testimony from a medical examiner said toxicology tests conducted as part of an autopsy showed Moonesinghe had a blood-alcohol level of 0.33% and traces of cocaine in his system at the time of the incident. Defense attorneys have argued the substances could have affected his judgment and behavior.<\/p>\n
The trial is scheduled to continue Thursday with the defense\u2019s final witnesses before closing arguments.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Daniel Sanchez did exactly what he was trained to do.\u00a0 That was the message the Austin police officer’s…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":49117,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[11],"tags":[132,134,133,815,251,27],"class_list":["post-49116","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-austin","tag-austin","tag-austin-headlines","tag-austin-news","tag-courts","tag-local-news","tag-texas"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/49116","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=49116"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/49116\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/49117"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=49116"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=49116"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=49116"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}