Kyle Mills/Post Independent
The officers who shot and killed an armed Rifle man in August will not face criminal charges, 9th District Attorney Jeff Cheney announced Tuesday.
Following a three-month investigation, the DA “concluded that no officer committed a criminal violation” when shooting Allan George, then 54, in the back on the Rifle bridge as he attempted to flee arrest while armed on Aug. 5.
George never pointed his handgun at Cpl. Dewey Ryan or Officer Shelby McNeal, the two officers involved, but Ryan still didn’t commit a crime in shooting him, the DA determined. Less-lethal force was not an option, according to the officers.
“Arguably … Corporal Ryan could have fired his firearm at
Mr. George as soon as he removed the handgun from concealment and openly
presented it,” according to the report.
The two officers exhausted all possible measures in trying
to get George to submit to arrest, according to the report. In total, Ryan and
McNeal told George to put his gun down 46 times, according to a transcript of
the audio recording device one of the officers was wearing.
“Where over three dozen orders to drop the weapon go
unheeded, prevailing law does not require a police officer to wait until an
armed and dangerous felon has drawn a bead on the officer or others before
using deadly force,” the report said.
According to the report, there is evidence that George was considering
suicide leading up to the incident.
George was wanted on charges of possessing child
pornography, and the investigation had been going on for several weeks with his
knowledge, according to the report.
George had pleaded guilty to sexual exploitation of a child in Lake County in 2009, and in April 2019, an FBI task force investigation located George on a private Kik Messenger group that shared child pornography.
Officers interviewed George, while he was working a
construction site in Vail, and he told them he “knew it was wrong, but explored
several groups on Kik” looking for child pornography.
On July 30, George’s wife requested a welfare check while
she was out of state, and reported that George had made suicidal statements.
She also told Rifle Police that George told her he was not “going back to jail
without a fight.”
A judge in Eagle County issued a warrant for George’s arrest
on the morning of Aug. 5. Police visited George’s home, where his wife informed
them George carried a firearm with him.
Ryan and McNeal parked their patrol vehicles on the intersection of Interstate 70 and Colorado Highway 13, at around 6:30 Aug. 5, and spotted George in his work truck around 7:11 p.m.
They pulled him over on the bridge, and George got out
without being told to do so and displayed the handgun.
What followed was several minutes of confrontation. Officers
kept their weapons on George and gave numerous commands for him to drop his
weapon.
At one point, McNeal asked George, “So, what can we do to make you put the gun down?”
George ignored all commands, the report said. The officers
believed George was going to jump off the bridge. McNeal alerted dispatch to “get
river rescue team ready.”
George did not jump, but ran toward the city of Rifle, and
was shot in the back twice by Ryan, according to the report.
Part of the incident was captured on video and provided to law enforcement and the Post Independent.
According to the officers, using a less-lethal TASER was not an option. When George produced the gun, he pointed it almost immediately at himself. “Using a TASER could have caused him to squeeze the trigger and shoot himself or cause him to fall into the swift river and drown,” according to the report.
