Lawyers for the family of a mentally ill man killed by police in Upper St. Clair in 2024 are pursuing their excessive-force claims with a federal appeals court after a lower-court judge dismissed the case last month.
U.S. District Judge Christy Criswell Wiegand ruled that qualified immunity protects the suburban South Hills police officers who pulled the trigger.
In a 17-page opinion, Wiegand wrote she could not find “a precedential case” addressing the civil rights violations alleged by the family of Christopher Shepherd, 48.
Four police officers from a South Hills regional SWAT team shot Shepherd, who was armed with a knife, at least 12 times while he was in the throes of a mental-health crisis in at his Lamar Road home around 8:40 p.m. on Jan. 7, 2024.
Shepherd’s family sued in April 2024. Their attorneys, Todd Hollis and Vincent Colianni, alleged the officers’ excessive use of force violated Shepherd’s constitutional protection from unreasonable search and seizure.
Wiegand, in her ruling, disagreed, saying the officers’ actions “do not show a violation of clearly established law.”
“Each defendant is entitled to qualified immunity because it was not clearly established that the force he employed amounted to a constitutional violation under the circumstances he faced,” Wiegand wrote. “Qualified immunity ‘protects all but the plainly incompetent or those who knowingly violate the law.’”
The Shepherd family’s lawyers were not convinced.
“We disagree with her — we see it differently,” Hollis said Thursday.
Hollis declined further comment. Hollis and Colianni on June 22 appealed the decision to the 3rd U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals.
Shepherd’s family told TribLive Thursday they were “deeply disappointed” by the dismissal and “believe the facts deserve to be fully heard” in the case.
“Chris was more than the worst day of his life,” Micki Kippelen, Shepherd’s sister, said in a prepared statement. “Like anyone facing a mental health emergency, he deserved compassion, dignity and every reasonable effort to preserve his life.
“We continue to seek justice for Chris,” she added, “because we believe his life mattered and that what happened to him deserves to be fully examined.”
New details
When Susan Shepherd first filed her civil rights lawsuit, she named as defendants four “Doe Police Officers” serving on the South Hills Area Council of Government’s SWAT team because their municipal bosses refused to identify the officers who shot her son.
Subpoenas later forced the towns to name them: Anthony Williams of Baldwin; Andrew Jacobs and Matthew Poling of Bethel Park; and John Skrip of Brentwood.
Upper St. Clair police had tried earlier that day to commit Christopher Shepherd to a psychiatric facility. He had been committed three times in the months leading up to the encounter.
When police knocked on the front door, Shepherd refused to answer, then pushed a kitchen knife through a plywood board that covered a broken window near that door, police said.
“Shepherd’s use of the knife was a symptom of his mental health condition,” the Shepherd family’s lawsuit said. “He thought the officers were there to harm him, and he used the knife defensively to ward off a perceived threat rather than to assault the officers.”
About 20 officers from the SWAT team were called to the scene, the complaint said. They positioned three snipers around the house, deployed a drone and evacuated several nearby houses.
After a five-hour standoff, police launched tear gas into Shepherd’s home, the complaint said. Armed with a knife, Shepherd walked out through the garage door.
Police have provided few specifics about what happened next. Wiegand’s opinion publicly addresses for the first time some of the details of the encounter.
Shepherd “did not comply with … commands to get on the ground and surrender,” police said in Wiegand’s ruling. Jacobs, one of the Bethel Park police officers, released a police dog and “gave the bite command,” according to the opinion.
The dog ran behind Shepherd, knocked him to the ground and clamped its jaw on Shepherd’s shoulder, the ruling said. When Jacobs attempted to remove the police dog, Shepherd “swung the knife” towards the officer, Wiegand wrote.
“Knife, knife,” Skrip, the Brentwood police officer, yelled out.
Within one or two seconds, Jacobs fired at least twice at Shepherd, according to Wiegand’s opinion. Multiple shots from other officers followed.
At least a dozen rounds are audible in a roughly four-minute cellphone video filmed by Shepherd’s neighbor that was obtained by TribLive.
Another officer said Jacobs was five steps away from Shepherd when he first pulled the trigger, Wiegand wrote, citing the deposition testimony of one of the officers who was present at the scene.
‘Do not return his call’
In 2024, Baldwin Borough, Bethel Park and Brentwood denied TribLive open-records requests filed under the state Right-To-Know Law seeking the names, ranks, hiring dates and any disciplinary history of the officers who shot Shepherd.
TribLive appealed those denials to the state Office of Open Records in Harrisburg. That office sided with police, saying the officers’ safety trumped transparency.
It was unclear Thursday if the four officers still work for those departments or serve on the South Hill Area Council of Government’s community incident response team. Neither the municipalities that employed the officers who shot Shepherd nor their police departments responded to multiple phone calls and emails this week seeking comment.
Upper St. Clair police Lt. Michael Lindenfelser declined comment.
“Do not return his call,” Upper St. Clair Manager Matthew R. Serakowski said in an email that was sent to a TribLive reporter and copied to the township’s assistant manager, two police supervisors and an executive assistant. “He already tried to get a sound bite from (Lindenfelser) who did speak with him. He just didn’t get the quote he was looking for.”
The South Hills Council of Governments, which runs the joint SWAT team, also declined to comment.
