Denver Post
Brief, fatal confrontation: 'He was gonna stab me'
Friday, October 17, 2003 - A second before he fired the four shots that killed Paul Childs, officer James Turney realized he knew the teenage boy.
"When he went around the corner an' I saw the knife, I looked up in his eyes an' he was staring at me," Turney told investigators hours after he shot Childs in the front doorway of the boy's home. "I looked back down at the knife an' then it, it clicked in my head that, that I know him from somewhere." A month and a half earlier, Turney said, he helped bring Childs home to that same house on East Thrill Place after the 15-year-old mentally disabled boy was caught trying to steal a bicycle. Now the two were face to face again. Childs was holding a knife with an 8 1/2-inch blade and was shuffling toward Turney. The officer ordered him to drop it. Childs didn't. Turney fired. "He was gonna come out, an' he was gonna stab me, an' I was in fear for my life an' the other officers that were nearby," Turney said. The events that brought Turney and Childs together on July 5 are reconstructed in a 30-page letter from District Attorney Bill Ritter to Police Chief Gerry Whitman and in interviews and documents produced during a three-month investigation. Quotes attributed to the officers are unaltered from the official interview transcripts. Childs was legally blind, suffered grand mal seizures and had developmental and learning disabilities. He was not on his medication and was recovering from a recent seizure. Those facts were never given to police officers at the scene. Eleven days before his death, Childs suffered a seizure and was hospitalized. The teenager tore up his room the day before the shooting, was "aggravated" and may not have taken his medication, his family said. At 1 p.m. on the day he was killed, Childs went into the kitchen and got a knife. He followed his mother, Helen, around "zombie- like," Ritter said Thursday. Helen, along with Paul's 16- year-old sister, Ashley, their friend Lakisha Newell, 21, her 5-year-old and her baby, and 14-year-old family friend Natandria Brown, were in the home. They decided to call 911, as they had done many times in the past to calm Paul. He considered police officers his friends, they said. Denver police were called to the family's home some 47 times during the past four years on complaints ranging from 911 hang-ups to the final confrontation when Childs was shot. Ashley Childs told police Paul had a knife, and "he's trying to stab my mother with it." But the dispatcher cut off his sister when she apparently attempted to explain her brother's disability. Four officers arrived at the home, all wearing the full blue Denver police uniform. They were not told of Childs' condition by dispatchers. They ran up to the home and ordered everyone out. Everyone but Paul Childs went outside. Childs came around the door, holding the knife. He was 4 to 6 feet from Turney, the closest officer. Two officers, Todd Geddes and Randall Krouse, were armed with Tasers - a nonlethal electric stun gun. Both pulled them out. Geddes quickly holstered his and pulled his gun. "From where I am to where he is, it's probably about 12 feet, maybe. And, uh, I mean using the 7-yard rule. I mean we're well within that 21-foot thing," Geddes said, referring to his training to consider an armed suspect dangerous at that distance. Krouse trained his Taser on Childs, aiming the red laser sight at the teenager's chest. Then Paul moved. Ashley said her brother was startled backward because of the laser sight from Krouse's Taser. Others there said he moved forward slowly. Krouse said Childs had the knife raised. Others said he carried it in front of him. "To me the kid looked like ... I'll be honest with you, he looked almost high to me. It ... like he was in a, he was in another world or somethin'," Krouse told investigators. Krouse did not fire his Taser, he said, because the whole incident happened so fast. He told investigators he believed Childs "could've easily stabbed one of us." Turney saw Childs and recognized him for an instant, then fired four shots from his .45-caliber semi-automatic pistol. Childs spun around and fell to the ground with the knife still in his hand. Childs was shot three times in the chest and abdomen and once in the back of the shoulder, according to an autopsy report. Officer David Naysmith said he didn't fire on Childs because, "I felt I didn't have a clear point o' fire to fire, an' Geddes was right in front o' me ... in my mind." Naysmith ran over and kicked the knife out of Childs' hand. Another officer found the teenager conscious. The boy told him his name, but nothing else. His mother said he never spoke again. Turney told investigators that Childs never crossed the door's threshold. All told, Turney estimated, only three to five seconds elapsed from the time Childs came around the corner to the time he fired his gun. "He was coming towards me," Turney said. In all, it took 4 minutes and 4 seconds from the time Ashley Childs called 911 to the time her brother was shot. Four hours later he was dead.