Reno police officer who accidentally shot suspect pulled the trigger when he was hit by another officer’s taser

RENO, Nevada – A Reno police officer accidentally shot an unarmed suspect in 2020 when he flinched and pulled the trigger of his service weapon – an unintentional reaction to being hit by a Taser fired by another officer, a prosecutor said Tuesday.

Washoe County District Attorney Chris Hicks cleared Officer Richard Jager of any criminal wrongdoing in releasing an investigative report into the nonfatal officer-involved shooting. The neighboring Sparks Police Department led the investigation.

The suspect, Christopher Sheahan, was treated at a hospital and survived the gunshot wound to the shoulder. He was found guilty of resisting a public official in February 2022 and ultimately sentenced to one day in jail, Hicks said.

Jager, who had just graduated from the police academy, was in his second week on duty and was treated at a local hospital where the Taser probe was removed from his knee. No one else was injured.

The shooting occurred on July 26, 2020, when several officers surrounded Sheahan, who was not complying with their commands after a traffic accident in a parking lot. Sheahan told the first officer he had mental health issues and exhibited erratic behavior, including removing his clothes during the confrontation, according to the investigative report.

Ultimately, George Cholico, a Washoe County sheriff’s deputy and 15-year law enforcement officer, “reasonably” concluded that the only way to obtain Sheahan’s consent was to use his Taser, Hicks wrote in the report.

“Unfortunately, Deputy Cholico’s Taser partially missed its target, and a single Taser probe struck Officer Jager in the right knee. The embedding of the Taser probe in Officer Jager’s knee caused him to flinch and inadvertently pull the trigger of his weapon, resulting in a single shot to Sheahan’s right shoulder,” Hicks said.

“The evidence from the entire investigation shows that Officer Jager’s firearm was not intentionally discharged, but rather discharged accidentally. In other words, Officer Jager did not have the deliberate intent to shoot Sheahan,” he wrote.

Hicks said the investigation into the shooting and subsequent assessment of whether criminal charges were warranted included reviewing hundreds of pages of reports and documents, interviews with police officers and witnesses, as well as photographs, 911 calls, video recordings and a crime scene examination.

Hicks said Sheahan told investigators during an interview while recovering in the hospital that he had disobeyed officers’ orders on several occasions. He tried to signal to officers that he did not have any weapons on him by emptying his pockets, he said.

“Sheahan acknowledged that I should have simply listened to the officer’s instructions and not gotten out of my car and freaked out like that,” Hicks wrote. He also apologized and expressed “his gratitude to the officers who administered first aid and ‘saved my life.'”