Texas Cop Kenneth Caplan Arrested After Shooting Woman For Honking

[Janelle2002 3,865]

Texas Cop Kenneth Caplan Arrested After Shooting Woman For Honking

Kenneth Caplan, a reserve deputy constable for Harris County, Precinct 6 in Texas, has been arrested for shooting a woman in a road rage incident earlier this month.

The incident happened on November 11, and escalated when the woman, who was not identified in multiple reports, said Caplan cut her off in traffic. Annoyed, she honked her horn and then bolted around Caplan’s car and cut him off.

This sent the man into a rage. He pulled alongside the woman. She thought that he was going to cuss at her. She shared the full harrowing experience in comments to the Houston Chronicle, noting that he “drove alongside her, rolled his window down, pointed his weapon and opened fire.”

“I just started crying because I knew I was going to die,” she said. “I wanted to call my mom to tell her ‘I love you.'”

Caplan had a female passenger with him. Together they fled the scene.

“He was aiming at me and I thought he was going to cuss me out. It didn’t register that I was, you know, going to get shot,” the victim added. “The blood was in between my nails, just crazy blood, and all over my cellphone, just covered.”

Click2Houston reports that the bullet grazed the woman’s head and that she was later admitted to the hospital, where she would stay for three days with “non-life threatening injuries.”

The Chronicle states that Kenneth Caplan was not wearing his uniform at the time of the incident, nor was he on duty.

“Precinct 6 neither condones nor tolerates the actions taken by Kenneth Caplan that connected him to this incident, and the necessary measures were taken to collect his credentials and remove him from our status,” Precinct 6 later stated in a news release.

With all the media attention given to officers using deadly force, this latest incident doesn’t help the relationship between peace officers and the general public.

In August, there were two separate shootings that received a great deal of national attention — one involving Dillon Taylor, a white unarmed man who was killed by a police officer, and then Michael Brown, who died after being shot several times by Officer Darren Wilson of the Ferguson, Missouri, police department.

In both cases, grand juries decided that there wasn’t enough evidence to pursue charges. Nevertheless, stories like these and that of Kenneth Caplan could continue to put the public on edge when dealing with law enforcement.

Do you think the officer who fired at the woman for honking should be given hard prison time?

Hail yes! Jail! Jail! Jail!

Read more at http://www.inquisitr.com/1643245/texas-cop-kenneth-caplan-arrested-after-shooting-woman-for-honking/#XdxSOqUvzm5xumtI.99

[GandD 5,966]

Hail, because it's spelled like jail. I get it.

[eieio 1,594]

The article is deceptive.

He didn't shoot her because she honked. He shot her because she cut him off.

[Darnell 8,478]

'reserve deputy constable'

that's not a real cop.

most fellas with this label aren't even paid.

i would not call him a cop, no.

[lostinblue 1,989]

Sounds like she was trying to run him off the road

[Teddy B 17,251]

Sounds like his life was in danger. He was within his rights to protect himself from the woman's road rage.

[JohnR! 5,495]

Absolutely. Any LEO in his situation would've done the same. What was this woman thinking when she decided cutting him off was acceptable in a civilized place. Seriously?

Sounds like his life was in danger. He was within his rights to protect himself from the woman's road rage.

[Mr. Big Dog 10,747]

If that had happened here in the Gunshine state, the cop would get off easy.

The below happened here earlier this year. All men are equal under law - some are just more equal than others.

TAMPA — The crash shattered the rear windshield of Evan Rees' Honda sedan. Sitting in the back seat, Rees, a 44-year-old teacher from Sebring, gaped through the empty window frame at the truck that had rear-ended his family on Interstate 4 east of Tampa.

He didn't have long to stare, as a man jumped from the truck's driver-side door and stormed toward the Honda. Rees, who had spent the afternoon at the Florida State Fair with his wife, sister and niece, stepped out to meet him. As a shouting match erupted, the man grabbed him, and the pair tumbled to the ground.

Bystanders pulled them apart. But as Rees rose to his knees, he found himself staring down the barrel of a Glock pistol. His assailant had drawn a gun and aimed it at him. According to the accounts of multiple witnesses, he threatened to kill Rees before lowering his gun.

"I thought I was going to die," Rees later told an investigator.

What the man pulled out next was equally shocking: a badge. The 55-year-old who had attacked and pulled a gun on Rees on the side of I-4 was Thomas Pettis, an off-duty Hillsborough County Sheriff's Office homicide detective.

The surprises weren't over. As Rees waited for the police to arrive, Pettis moved through the crowd that had gathered and punched Rees in the head.

In the wake of his actions that Feb. 15, Pettis was criminally charged and retired from the Sheriff's Office. But two months later, questions linger about law enforcement's handling of the episode.

Pettis' brandishing of a handgun could meet the statutory definition of aggravated assault with a firearm, a felony punishable by a prison sentence of at least three years and up to five. Yet he is only being prosecuted for misdemeanor battery, a charge that qualifies him for pretrial intervention programs and the avoidance of criminal penalties.

Prosecutors, following what some say is a tenuous line of legal reasoning, asserted that Pettis pointed the gun at Rees in self-defense, even though the detective initiated the conflict and the fight was already broken up when he drew his weapon.

The conduct of the Sheriff's Office also raises questions.

Despite being the only suspect in a felony criminal investigation, Pettis was never booked into the county jail, sparing him the humiliating ritual in which ordinary citizens see their mug shots land on the Internet.

And a video of the confrontation captured by a teenager on her cellphone was collected by a sheriff's deputy, who then urged the girl's parents to delete their copy of the footage before leaving the crime scene, according to the girl's father, a bystander with no connection to Pettis or Rees.

Rees and some legal professionals familiar with the case wonder whether Pettis received favorable treatment because of his status as a veteran sheriff's deputy — and, perhaps more significantly, his importance to dozens of open homicide cases.

Pettis had a hand in the investigation of 28 pending cases, according to the Hillsborough State Attorney's Office, including several closely watched murder trials.

"I feel I was assaulted with a deadly weapon," Rees, an Army veteran who teaches biology at Sebring High School, said in an interview with the Tampa Bay Times. "I think the charges that are brought against him right now, they don't seem very fair. It doesn't seem like anybody else would have gotten the same charges for the same actions."

Rees has no criminal record, and investigators determined he did not commit any criminal acts during his encounter with Pettis, although the detective said Rees bit his thumb and put a finger in his eye while they were wrestling. (Rees likewise said Pettis tried to gouge his eyes when they were on the ground.)

Pettis' alleged attack on Rees was never made public. The Times learned of the incident through interviews with eyewitnesses and a 250-page Sheriff's Office incident report that has not previously been disclosed.

Pettis, who is scheduled to be arraigned on the battery charge Monday in Hillsborough Circuit Court, declined to comment because his case is pending.

'I'm going to kill you'

Jeff Krumm, a 38-year-old Naples resident, was driving his girlfriend and three children to Disney World on Feb. 15 when he came upon an accident scene on I-4 near the Kingsway Road overpass in Seffner. Two men were standing by their cars, arguing. Krumm pulled over and got out to help.

As he approached, Krumm said in a statement to authorities, one of the men — later identified as Pettis — grabbed Rees by the collar. The pair locked up and went to the ground. Krumm and another bystander managed to yank them apart.

Krumm said he was standing next to Pettis when the deputy pulled a handgun from an ankle holster.

In his statement to investigators, Krumm said he heard Pettis tell Rees, "I'll shoot your a--" or "something to that effect," according to Sheriff's Office records. Krumm's girlfriend, Alissa Mitchell, told investigators that she heard Pettis say, "I'm going to kill you!"

Krumm, thinking of his children waiting in the car, began to carefully back away from Pettis. He was surprised when Pettis flashed his badge. "He never acted like a police officer, in my view of what a police officer should have done," Krumm said in an interview with the Times.

"I don't think he should have pulled the gun," Krumm said. "There was no threat going on. If anything, he was the initial aggressor. He had no control."

The accounts of Krumm and Mitchell largely corroborate those of Rees and his family. Rees, a wrestling coach, said he grappled with Pettis to defend himself when he was grabbed by the throat.

Cindy Vervuurt, Rees' wife and a teacher at Lake Placid Middle School south of Sebring, and his sister, Marcella Haupt, whose daughter was driving the car during the accident, both told investigators they heard Pettis say, "I'm going to f------ kill you."

http://www.tampabay.com/news/publicsafety/crime/light-punishment-for-deputy-who-pulled-gun-during-off-duty-road-rage/2176945