{"id":17650,"date":"2019-08-16T10:13:35","date_gmt":"2019-08-16T16:13:35","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.skyhinews.com\/?p=59456"},"modified":"2019-08-16T10:13:35","modified_gmt":"2019-08-16T16:13:35","slug":"video-raises-possibility-police-shot-rifle-man-in-the-back","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/alwaysmountaintime.com\/krky\/local-news\/video-raises-possibility-police-shot-rifle-man-in-the-back\/","title":{"rendered":"Video raises possibility police shot Rifle man in the back"},"content":{"rendered":"
\n
Law enforcement officers secure the scene of the officer involved shooting Aug. 5 on the Highway 13 bridge at Rifle.<\/strong>
Kyle Mills\/Post Independent<\/em><\/figcaption><\/div>\n<\/figure>\n

A cell phone video appears to show the Aug. 5 fatal shooting of Allan George in Rifle by police and seems to indicate he was shot in the back as he was moving away from officers.<\/p>\n

The footage was taken across the river from the bridge where George was stopped, then shot by Rifle Police, who were attempting to arrest George on charges of child exploitation.<\/p>\n

Ten seconds of the video reviewed by the Post Independent appears to have been shared on SnapChat and filmed by a second mobile phone. The PI obtained the video through an anonymous source.<\/p>\n

In the video, a person believed to be George \u2014 wearing a brightly colored shirt \u2014 is seen jogging away from a police car followed by at least one person dressed in dark colors. Two shots are heard in the video, and the person falls forward.<\/p>\n

In the video, it appears the suspect\u2019s hands are restrained behind his back but it is unclear whether he was holding anything.<\/p>\n

George died shortly after the incident. The cause of death was two gunshot wounds \u201cof the chest,\u201d according to the coroner\u2019s press release issued two days after the incident, which could mean he was shot from behind.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe \u2018of chest\u2019 refers to the chest cavity and vital organs contained within,\u201d Garfield County Coroner Robert Glassmire said. \u201cIt does not indicate the point of entry of any wounds from gunshots.\u201d<\/p>\n

Glassmire declined to comment on whether the entry wounds were in the chest or the back, and deferred to forensic investigators on whether there were handcuff marks on the wrists.<\/p>\n

Two officers were involved in the shooting, and have been placed on administrative leave while the incident is being investigated by a Critical Incident Team comprised of Garfield County Sheriff\u2019s Office detectives and other 9th<\/sup> District Attorney staff.<\/p>\n

The video shows the Rifle Bridge over the Colorado River, but it is not possible to identify George or any other figures from the video alone. However, the cars shown within the video match images investigators shared in an effort to look for witnesses to the shooting.<\/p>\n

One car was driving by the suspect and police vehicles on the bridge around the time of the gunshots.<\/p>\n

The day after the incident, Garfield County Sheriff\u2019s Office spokesman Walt Stowe, who is part of the 9th Judicial District\u2019s Critical Incident Team investigating the shooting, released pictures of four cars.<\/p>\n

Stowe sent out a press release with small, thumbnail-sized pictures of four cars that may have witnessed the incident, and asked anyone with information about the vehicles\u2019 owners to contact investigators.<\/p>\n

Those four images match frames from the cell phone video shared with the Post Independent.<\/p>\n

Police were attempting to arrest George on an Eagle County warrant for child sexual exploitation, on charges that he possessed pornographic images of minors. After pulling George over, \u201cthings escalated,\u201d Stowe said last week.<\/p>\n

\u201cHe had a gun, and the Rifle Police Department responded initially, to my knowledge, according to protocol,\u201d Stowe said.<\/p>\n

When asked about the mobile phone video and what it depicted, Stowe said he had not seen it.<\/p>\n

Speaking generally, Stowe did explain what officers are trained to do when a suspect has a gun.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe real question when it comes to protocol is whether he still had the gun in his hand, at least to my mind,\u201d Stowe said.<\/p>\n

\u201cIf he still was carrying a gun, he still was a threat, not just to the officers but to the people passing by,\u201d Stowe said. \u201cI can only speak to that in generality, because I have not seen the video at this point.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cThe District Attorney will decide whether this warrants further investigation of the officers, or if they were within in their standard procedural protocol,\u201d Stowe added.<\/p>\n

\u201cI think the investigation is close to being complete, and I\u2019m anticipating they will be turning over the information soon to the District Attorney,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n

Rifle Police officers do not have body cams or record video in police vehicles, Rifle Police Chief Tommy Klein said. Officers have the ability to record audio of interactions, but Klein would not confirm whether there is audio of recording of the George shooting.<\/p>\n

Klein said he has seen a video shot from the same angle near the boat ramp which identified the vehicles in the video the Post Independent has seen. He added the CIT is aware of the cell phone video.<\/p>\n

District Attorney Jeff Cheney declined to comment on any piece of evidence, but said the CIT inspectors were being thorough.<\/p>\n

\u201cI can\u2019t comment on any of the evidence, or anything that may remotely be a piece of evidence,\u201d Cheney said.<\/p>\n

He added, \u201cWe will definitely be informing the public when the investigation is concluded, and legal conclusions have been made.\u201d<\/p>\n

The Post Independent is not publishing the video because we were unable to obtain the original videographer\u2019s permission to reproduce.<\/p>\n

via:: Sky-Hi News<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Law enforcement officers secure the scene of the officer involved shooting Aug. 5 on the Highway 13 bridge at Rifle.Kyle Mills\/Post Independent A cell phone video appears to show the Aug. 5 fatal shooting of Allan George in Rifle by police and seems to indicate he was shot in the back as he was moving […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[56],"tags":[],"class_list":{"0":"post-17650","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","6":"category-local-news"},"acf":[],"publishpress_future_action":{"enabled":false,"date":"2026-06-14 13:54:18","action":"change-status","newStatus":"draft","terms":[],"taxonomy":"category","extraData":[]},"publishpress_future_workflow_manual_trigger":{"enabledWorkflows":[]},"distributor_meta":false,"distributor_terms":false,"distributor_media":false,"distributor_original_site_name":"KRKY Ski Country","distributor_original_site_url":"https:\/\/alwaysmountaintime.com\/krky","push-errors":false,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/alwaysmountaintime.com\/krky\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/17650","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/alwaysmountaintime.com\/krky\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/alwaysmountaintime.com\/krky\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/alwaysmountaintime.com\/krky\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/alwaysmountaintime.com\/krky\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=17650"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/alwaysmountaintime.com\/krky\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/17650\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/alwaysmountaintime.com\/krky\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=17650"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/alwaysmountaintime.com\/krky\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=17650"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/alwaysmountaintime.com\/krky\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=17650"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}