In the early morning hours of May 28, 2013, Jerry Waller (born October 23, 1940) heard possible trespassers outside his house in a suburban neighborhood of Fort Worth, Texas, United States. When he went outside to investigate, carrying his handgun, he encountered two police officers, one of whom shot and killed him. No criminal charges were brought after the officers were cleared of wrongdoing; while the city was found not to be liable in civil litigation, suits against the officers involved have continued.
The officers, both in their first year on the job, had been responding to a report of a burglar alarm being triggered at a neighboring residence. Due to the poor lighting conditions, they went to the wrong house, Waller's, and did not turn their flashlights on to verify the address as they had walked across the yard of another neighboring house in order to avoid alerting any intruder on the property to their approach. Seeing it was dark, they believed it unoccupied, and patrolled around the perimeter, where they encountered Waller outside the house near the opened garage.
Waller's family has challenged the officers' version of events, noting the two give different accounts of how far away the officer who fired was at the time, and how Waller was holding his gun. The family says Waller was inside the garage when he was shot. They also point to the autopsy report, which shows wounds to Waller's hand that they say are inconsistent with him having a gun in it at the time they were inflicted. Courts have held that it is a genuine question of fact as to whether Waller was armed when fired on; if it were found that he was not, the officers would not be entitled to qualified immunity.
Background
Jerry Waller was born in 1940 in Fort Worth to a minister and his wife. After graduating from Brewer High School in the city, he served in the military, marrying Kathleen Bergin in 1968 while he was in Officer Candidate School during his service in the Oklahoma National Guard. The couple raised two children. After returning to civilian life, he started two small businesses, a tire company and small farm, both of which he was still involved with at the time of his death.
Incident
May 27, 2013, was Memorial Day, the end of a three-day holiday weekend. The Wallers had cooked a barbecue meal outside that day in their home abutting a golf course in eastern Fort Worth's Woodhaven neighborhood. At 11 p.m. they went to bed for the night. Kathy made sure the garage door, open during the day as they cooked on the patio, was closed and locked.
Almost two hours later, about 12:45 a.m. May 28, a neighbor who lived across the street from the Wallers, who was recovering from recent surgery and was chronically ill, was showing her home care aide how to set her burglar alarm. In the process she triggered it; neither she nor the aide could turn it off. The alarm company, ADT, was notified and attempted to call, but only reached the neighbor's answering machine. ADT called another neighbor who told them the woman next door was sick and suggested sending police to check on the situation.
ADT's representative called the Fort Worth Police Department (FWPD), who dispatched officers Benjamin Hanlon and Richard Hoeppner at 12:52 a.m. The two were probationary officers in their first year in law enforcement; they had started with the department in February after three months of supervised field training. They were working the night shift since officers were allowed to choose their shifts based on seniority and all the positions on the day and evening shifts had been taken by those with more time on the job. They had just finished working a call together. Driving separate patrol cars, they parked in front the house next to the Wallers just before 1 a.m. and joined each other on foot for the wellness check.
The officers had not verified the address with their cars' GPS units. Later, Hanlon and Hoeppner told investigators that they assumed that the house they had parked in front of was adjacent to the one they had been dispatched to, unaware, they told investigators later, that odd- and even-numbered houses were on different sides of the street. Seeing the house they believed they had been dispatched to was dark, they considered the possibility they were coming upon a burglary in progress and decided to approach without putting their flashlights on out of concern for their safety.