WASHTENAW COUNTY, Mich. – Washtenaw County Sheriff Alishia Dyer stood in front of the podium this morning seeking to clarify what happened in the early morning hours of Jan. 6 when a police chase through the streets of Ypsilanti ended with one man dead following a flurry of gunshots from deputies.
“Nobody wants a situation like this to occur,” Dyer said as she released dashcam footage of the incident on Thursday morning. “This is a Tragedy.”
The trouble started when a 9-1-1 call came in at 1:24 a.m. on Jan. 6, from a caller who identified himself as “Matt,” saying he saw a large white van driving erratically in and out of traffic and through a gas station without license plates or headlights. Surveillance footage shows the van racing past a different gas station.
Just six minutes later at 1:30 a.m., a second call came in from a man who insisted the van’s driver pointed a weapon at his wife.
“One of the 9-1-1 callers told dispatchers that their wife was threatened with a gun when deputies were responding to the scene,” Dyer said. “Because of police scanner apps, that information was public, and there was a lot of assumptions made from the radio traffic.”
Over the next 32 minutes, Sheriff’s Deputies chased the van through Ypsilanti.
On four different occasions, the van stopped and aggressively backed up toward the deputies before pulling off without hitting them.
The chase came to a sudden and violent end at 2:06 a.m., near Prospect and Towner streets.
One of the deputies hit a pit maneuver on the van, causing it to overturn.
The deputies then poured out of their vehicles – one of them almost immediately yelling the driver has a gun, despite no gun being visible in the video.
The four deputies fired more than 2 dozen shots into the van from all sides.
The driver – whom Dyer would not identify – was quickly killed, and it was later revealed that he did not, in fact, have a weapon.
The four unnamed deputies have been placed on administrative leave, and the shooting is under investigation by the Michigan State Police.
Dyer would not comment on what protocols were for that kind of situation and would review them after the investigation ends.