Questions arise after a 19-year-old suspect is killed in raid by Frederick ... - Washington Post

It was not the heater.

Frederick County sheriff's deputies — wearing SWAT gear, night-vision gear and military-style helmets — were storming Vallery Vail's home in a raid connected to her son, who was a suspect in a home invasion and who the deputies feared might be armed. They set off a deafening flash-bang device. Then came gunshots.

"Boom, boom, boom, boom, boom," Vail said, describing a hail of 18 9mm bullets deputies fired at her son. There was screaming. Deputies entered her bedroom, she said, and handcuffed her.

"I don't hear Daniel," she remembers thinking. "Why isn't anyone helping him?"

Daniel Vail had been shot multiple times, including twice in his left temple, according to his family, who have yet to receive the official autopsy report. He died beside his bed.

What happened inside that converted barn Jan. 10 is the subject of an upcoming Frederick County grand jury hearing, but there is no mystery to sheriff's office officials.

They say deputies served a search warrant on the home after Vail was allegedly involved in a home invasion that featured a shotgun and a baseball bat. They say he pointed a shotgun at deputies and refused orders to drop it. The deputies eliminated the threat, Sheriff Charles A. Jenkins said, and both of them remain on the job.

Vail's family and its attorney tell a very different story. If Vail was holding the shotgun, they say the flash-bang left him too confused to hear the orders to drop the weapon, which was later found near his body. And they say a bedroom drape with apparent bullet holes in it suggests Vail was looking out the window to see what had exploded when the shots were fired, not confronting the deputies.

The family has hired attorney Clarke Ahlers, a former Howard County police officer, to investigate the incident, which occurred two days before Robert Ethan Saylor, a 16-year-old with Down syndrome, died in a scuffle with off-duty Frederick sheriff's deputies. A grand jury declined to hand down charges in that case.

The use of deadly force by law enforcement often poses challenges for investigators. Decisions get made in split seconds, usually under extreme duress. But even in big cities such as Washington, police rarely discharge their weapons. In the District, where 3,800 officers made 51,000 arrests in 2011, police fired at suspects 12 times, killing five, department figures show.

Some officers go their entire careers without firing their weapons. Very few ever kill a suspect, said Maria Haberfeld, a police science professor at the John Jay College of Criminal Justice. But she also noted that executing search warrants is one of the most dangerous jobs for officers: "It's in­cred­ibly stressful for them."

To Frederick deputies, Vail was a grave threat, and they approached him accordingly. To his family, Vail was a decent kid involved in something dumb, and if police wanted to question him, they should have just knocked on the front door.