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Daniel Shaver

Mesa, Arizona · 2016 → acquitted 2017

What happened

On January 18, 2016, Daniel Shaver, 26, a pest-control worker from Granbury, Texas, was in Mesa on a business trip, staying at a La Quinta Inn & Suites. That evening he showed two guests in his room a scoped pellet rifle he used to exterminate birds inside grocery stores. Someone saw it near his fifth-floor window, and hotel staff called the police.

Six officers, led by Sergeant Charles Langley, ordered Shaver and a guest, Monique Portillo, out of the room and into the hallway. Portillo was taken into custody unharmed. For several minutes, Langley shouted a rapid series of commands at Shaver as he lay on the floor — hands up, legs crossed, push up to his knees, then crawl — warning him that a mistake could get him killed. When Shaver’s legs came uncrossed, and again when his hands dropped behind his back, Langley screamed at him. Shaver, crying, answered: “Please don’t shoot me.”

Ordered to crawl toward the officers, Shaver moved his right hand toward his waistband. Officer Philip Brailsford fired his AR-15 five times, killing him. Shaver was unarmed; the only rifle was the pellet gun, still inside the room. The police report and later reporting noted he may have been reaching to keep his shorts from slipping down. An autopsy measured his blood alcohol at 0.27, more than three times the legal driving limit.

The video

The footage below is Brailsford’s own body camera — graphic video of a fatal shooting, released by the Mesa Police Department on December 7, 2017, hours after the verdict, and published here as the public record of the encounter.

The criminal case

In March 2016, the Maricopa County Attorney charged Brailsford with second-degree murder and a lesser charge of reckless manslaughter, stating that “the use of deadly physical force was not justified in this instance.” That same month, the Mesa Police Department fired him, citing policy violations and unsatisfactory performance; an internal investigation found he had engraved “You’re fucked” and “Molon labe” on his patrol rifle. Sergeant Langley, who had given the commands, was never charged. He retired from the department four months after the shooting and later moved to the Philippines.

Brailsford testified that he believed Shaver was reaching for a weapon, and that if the situation happened exactly the same way, he would do the same thing. After a six-week trial, a Maricopa County jury acquitted him of all charges on December 7, 2017.

The outcome

In 2018, Mesa confirmed that the U.S. Department of Justice had opened a civil-rights investigation and subpoenaed the department’s records on the shooting. No federal charges or public findings were ever announced. In August 2018, the city quietly reinstated Brailsford for 42 days in a “budget position,” which made him eligible to retire on accidental disability for PTSD attributed to the shooting and trial. The pension board unanimously approved his medical retirement, at $2,500 a month; the arrangement became public in July 2019.

Mesa settled the family’s civil claims in two parts: $1.5 million to Shaver’s parents in 2021, and, in November 2022, $8 million to his widow, Laney Sweet, and their two daughters — $9.5 million in total. No officer was ever punished beyond Brailsford’s firing, and the firing was later converted into a medical retirement.

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