originally published at: http://www.pressdemocrat.com/article/20070313/NEWS/70313016/1350
Lawyer: Sebastopol teen shot in van
By JEREMY HAY & RANDI ROSSMANN
THE PRESS DEMOCRAT
Published: Tuesday, March 13, 2007 at 7:07 p.m.
Last Modified: Tuesday, March 13, 2007 at 7:07 p.m.
New details have emerged Tuesday in the shooting death of a Sebastopol teenager by Sonoma County sheriff’s deputies, with a lawyer for the boy’s family saying the 16-year-old was shot in a parked van at the family home.
Authorities have said Jeremiah Chass, an Analy High School junior, was armed with a knife and threatened to kill his younger brother before dying Monday in a “violent struggle” with the two deputies.
“The mother got the brother away, then the police went in the van to try and disarm him, and he was shot inside the van,” said Eric Safire, a San Francisco civil rights attorney.
Safire was was retained Monday by Chass’ aunt Diane Greene of Massachusetts. He has said the family, which hasn’t spoken publicly, has questioned the shooting.
He said he was told by the county Sheriff’s Department that Chass was shot in the van, but he was waiting for more details from investigators.
“The police are playing it pretty close to the vest,” he said, referring to the Santa Rosa Police Department, which is investigating the shooting under a county protocol for handling officer-involved shootings.
“It takes time for these investigations. I get it, but we’d like to get some more information,” he said.
Santa Rosa Police Sgt. Lisa Banayat said investigators and police officials were working to determine what details could be released.
In their initial account of the shooting, authorities said the two deputies were sent to the Chass home — a large house with a well-kept garden — after someone at the house called 911 for help.
Chass lived at the home with his mother, stepfather and stepbrother.
As they were on their way, several phone calls to and from the home were made through the county dispatch center, and recordings of those calls captured what was believed to be a “very violent altercation occurring, with a child frantically screaming, and a male subject chanting and threatening to kill the child.”
Dispatch tapes also captured the deputies pleading with Chass to drop a knife.
Among details not made public are how many times Chass was shot, an exact timeline of the events and the names of the two deputies, who suffered minor injuries while struggling with Chass. The nature of their injuries also has not been released.
Sheriff Bill Cogbill said the decision to release a transcript of the dispatch tapes and the deputies names was up to Santa Rosa police.
As for the deputies’ identities, he said: “I believe that the releasing of the deputies’ names at this point, won’t jeopardize the investigation …
but we don’t control what Santa Rosa puts out, it’s their investigation.”
Earlier Tuesday, in anticipation of students grieving the death of their classmate, Analy High Principal Marty Webb said the school’s “entire administration and counseling staff is organized to meet the students’
needs right now. I think they have a lot of questions.”
“Traffic accidents, that sort of thing, we get that occasionally. This was just completely out of the blue,” Webb said.
Poster boards and photos of the teen were in place in the school hallway and in the library for people to leave messages or memories.
Webb called Chass an “academically oriented student” who had talked of wanting to go to a four-year college from high school. His classes included trigonometry, pre-calculus, college level language arts, physics and third-year Spanish, Webb said.
You can reach Staff Writers Jeremy Hay at 521-5212 or jeremy.hay@pressdemocrat.com and Staff Writer Randi Rossmann at 521-5412 or randi.rossmann@pressdemocrat.com.