AUSTIN (KXAN) - The officer-involved shooting in the early morning hours of May 11 left Nathaniel Sanders, 19, dead and Sir Lawrence Smith shot and wounded at the Walnut Creek Apartments parking lot.
Austin Police Department Senior Officer Leonardo Quintana, who shot and killed Sanders, was put on administrative leave, pending investigations into the shooting.
The following is a timeline for the case surrounding the fatal shooting of Nathaniel Sanders:
Officer-involved Nathaniel Sanders shooting timeline
May 11 in the early morning: Austin police investigate a suspicious-car report in East Austin at the Walnut Creek Apartments just south of Manor Road at 6409 Springdale Road after there were complaints of shots being fired into the air from a car.
May 11 at 5 a.m.: APD Officer Leonardo Quintana fatally shoots Nathaniel Sanders, 19, and wounds Sir Lawrence Smith.
May 11 around 5 a.m.: Nathaniel Sanders’ brother, Jecovi Taylor, receives word of his brother's death from Sanders' girlfriend.
May 11: Detectives with the APD gang unit begin surveillance on the apartments after the shooting.
May 11 at 11 a.m.: Police respond in riot gear and try to calm down a community of nearly 200 people who were angry and smashing windows after the shooting. Some eight police cars were damaged, and at least one man was arrested.
May 11 at 2 p.m:.City officials release shooting details. City Manager Marc Ott, APD Chief Art Acevedo and then-Austin Mayor Will Wynn give their recounts of the incident during a press conference.
May 12 in the early afternoon: Sir Lawrence Smith is released from the hospital.
May 12 at 4:51 p.m.: Police chief Art acevedo expressed concern over the officer-involved shooting and why Sanders’ body was left at the scene for 5 ½ hours after the shooting.
May 12 late at night: Dozens of neighbors, family and friends gathered at the Walnut Creek Apartments for a candlelight vigil in honor of Sanders. Many people hugged and cried as they gathered around the expanding memorial for the dead teenager.
May 13: Community members call on APD to overhaul its dash-camera video system and policy after Quintana’s camera wasn’t rolling to capture the fatal shooting. The Austin Chapter of the American Civil Liberties Union questions APD’s $800,000 federal funding requests for surveillance cameras.
May 15: A gang member reportedly threatens to kill Austin police in retalliation for Sanders' shooting death. Known gang member Ellis Ingram IV, 27, is charged with making terroristic threats after he allegedly called police on 911 and threatened to kill all Austin police officers.
May 17: Family and friends gathered at Cook-Walden Funeral Home to remember Sanders.
May 18: Sanders' funeral is scheduled at the First Pentecostal Church of Austin, and family and friends buried Sanders. The manager of Cook-Walden Capital Park Funeral Home said when his employees asked off-duty officers to provide funeral escorts, they declined, citing a terroristic threat to officers made by a gang the week before.
May 26: The NAACP said it hopes Sanders' death triggers community action and that it planned on working with the Walnut Creek Apartments complex to bring more social services to the residents.
June 1 at 6:30 p.m.: Emotions run high at an East Austin community forum at the Delco Center with city officials. Officials organized the forum to provide information about Sanders' shooting death the month before.
June 2: Sanders' family filed a lawsuit against the City of Austin and Quintana. The suit claimed:
- inadequate supervision of officers regarding their use of force
- employing excessive force against minorities
- inadequate warning systems to weed out potentially dangerous officers
- failing to adequately investigate use of force by APD officers
- improperly training officers on how to approach sleeping citizens and inadequate training
August 3: Austin police chief asked all on-duty officers to show up to work the next day in uniform in anticipation of an imminent grand jury decision on whether or not Quintana will be criminally indicted.
August 4: The Travis County grand jury declined to indict Quintana for the fatal shooting of Sanders. Travis County District Attorney Rosemary Lehmberg said Quintana’s actions did not violate criminal law.
The dash-cam video is shown for the first time during the press conference.
Elements released that day via the Travis County DA's Web site :
- Sanders' autopsy report
- APD Officer Michael Te’Ron Franklin's statement
- APD Officer Mohammad Siddiqui's statement
- APD Officer John Alexander Hhitzelberg’s statement
- Diagrams of the scene
August 5: Travis County District Attorney Rosemary Lehmberg released a statement in its entirety, recounting the police shooting on May 11 and reaction to the grand jury decision not to indict the officer.
August 6: Sanders' family protests Quintana’s no-bill, and family attorney Adam Loewy voices intentions of filing
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