Oklahoma City cops shoot deaf man not guilty of crime

Tuesday night, officers approached a home where a supposed suspect in a hit-and-run crime was living.

After a witness told Lt. Matthew Lindsey the address where the vehicle supposedly had gone too, officers ended up at a house where Magdiel Sanchez, 35, was sitting on the porch.  

As officers approached the porch, Sanchez stood up with a metal pipe in hand and began to approach the officers in turn.

As Sanchez approached the officers, they began to yell commands at him. However, due to his deafness, Sanchez couldn’t hear the commands. Despite witnesses yelling at officers that Sanchez was deaf, they released fire on Sanchez with a taser and gun.

"In those situations, very volatile situations, you have a weapon out, you can get what they call tunnel vision, or you can really lock in to just the person that has the weapon that'd be the threat against you," police Capt. Bo Mathews said via AP. "I don't know exactly what the officers were thinking at that point."

Despite not having a criminal history, Sanchez encountered gun wounds and died at the scene. It is still not completely clear if a taser was ever a weapon on either of the officer’s person as an alternative to a gun.

Further incriminating, Sanchez wasn’t the driver in the hit-and-run incident. He wasn’t even in the car. Also, the metal pipe he was holding was a usual fixture in Sanchez’s hand due to the stray dogs in the neighborhood.

Sgt. Chris Barnes, the officer who shot the gun, is currently on administrative leave pending an investigation.

Copyright The Gayly – 9/20/2017 3:50 p.m. CST