
After killing unarmed man, Texas deputy told colleague: 'I just smoked a dude'
HENDERSON, Texas — Timothy Michael Randall was on the phone with his mother when a police car pulled up behind his Nissan Altima with its lights flashing. It was just after 12:30 a.m. on Sept. 14, 2022, and Randall was heading to his cousin's house after a night out.
'He had called to let me know that he was going to be home a few minutes later,' Randall's mother, Wendy Tippitt, recalled. 'So I wouldn't worry.'
Randall, 29, pulled over and hung up with his mom. Sgt. Shane Iversen of the Rusk County Sheriff's Office walked up to the Altima and told Randall that he had run a stop sign, police dash camera footage shows. Randall denied doing so, and Iversen ordered him out of the car.
What began as a routine traffic stop, on a country road two hours east of Dallas, quickly spun out of control.
As Randall was stepping out of the car, he put his wallet in his back pocket and adjusted his waistband.
Iversen dug his hands into the front of Randall's pants and then told him to put his hands behind his back, the dash cam footage shows. Randall kept his arms raised.
'Officer, I don't have anything on me,' he said.
'Officer, please, can you tell me what I'm under arrest for?' Randall asked moments later.
Iversen didn't respond. Instead, he wrestled Randall to the pavement.
'Officer, please,' Randall pleaded again as he struggled to get to his feet.
Then Iversen threw Randall to the ground again. He landed on his back several feet away, but the momentum brought him back to his feet. Randall began to turn to run away from Iversen, who had already pulled out his gun and was pointing it at Randall.
'Get down,' Iversen yelled as he fired one shot, striking Randall in the chest.
Randall continued to run down the street but collapsed face down. Iversen radioed for help and then tried to render medical aid, but Randall died on the pavement. The bullet had torn through his ribs, lungs and heart, according to autopsy records.
After another deputy arrived minutes later, Iversen, then 57, returned to his patrol car and phoned a colleague.
'I just smoked a dude,' he said in a hushed voice.
In the following days and weeks, Randall's mother searched for answers in vain, calling the Texas Rangers and the Rusk County district attorney's office. She had no idea how her son wound up dead after a police traffic stop.
'No one was telling us anything,' said Tippitt, who was born and raised in Rusk County and now cleans houses for a living.
Her first shock came two months after the shooting when a grand jury returned a no bill in the case, meaning it chose not to indict Iversen for killing an unarmed man.
The second came last summer when Iversen's lawyers turned over the dashcam video after she filed a federal lawsuit. Nearly two years after the shooting, she finally got to see, in brutal detail, what happened in the moments before her youngest son was killed.
'The only person that was attacking anybody was Sgt. Iversen attacking my son,' Tippitt said.
Iversen quietly retired after the shooting and fought in court to keep the video from being made public. Its release sparked a backlash in rural Rusk County. It also set Randall's mother on a crusade to get justice for his killing.
But whether that will happen — and what it would even look like — remains to be seen.
'Survival instinct kicked in'
In every year of the past decade, roughly 1,000 people have been shot and killed by police in the U.S., according to a database created by The Washington Post.
The vast majority of these shootings don't make national headlines. Many involve a person who was armed at the time or who acted aggressively toward officers.
Randall was not armed, and the video shows he was not aggressive toward Iversen. Yet the case has received little attention outside Rusk County — leaving Randall's family to process his killing alone and further reinforcing their feeling that, to the police and outside world, his life didn't matter.
'Me and my family, we don't come from money,' said Randall's older brother Douglas, an Army veteran who served for 10 years.
Their parents divorced when the boys were toddlers, and their mother worked several jobs — customer service rep, waitress, school lunch lady — to keep the family afloat while raising the boys alone.
'No one has said an apology in Rusk County,' Douglas added. 'No one has shown remorse.'
When their paths crossed in the fall of 2022, Randall and Iversen were at very different stages of life.
Randall had struggled to find his footing after graduating from high school, where he played football and basketball. He found work as a welder but was arrested a handful of times on drug possession charges, leading to two felony convictions and two stints in prison.
Despite spending three years behind bars, Randall remained easygoing and optimistic, family members said. He was working in construction at the time of the shooting and had recently moved in with his mother following a break-up.
'He always tried to look at the positive,' his mother said. 'He was just an upbeat, happy person.'
Iversen was nearing the end of his law enforcement career. By the time he pulled over Randall, he had been working as a police officer for 13 years, first in Dallas and then in Rusk County, where he was hired in 2020. He was also a decorated Army special forces soldier who served in Iraq and Afghanistan.
Iversen's military career began in 1986 with the Marines. He later joined the Army and then served in special forces, rising to the rank of senior sergeant, military records show. He deployed to Afghanistan for four months in 2003 and then to Iraq from April 2007 to September 2008 — earning a Bronze Star for valor, the fourth highest military decoration.
Two days after the killing, Iversen sat for an interview with the Texas Rangers, the agency that investigates police shootings. Reflecting on his military career, he said he was involved in one or two 'direct fire engagements' in Afghanistan and at least 10 in Iraq.
'Those were most of the raids that we did,' he said about his time in Iraq, according to a transcript obtained by NBC News.
Iversen told the investigators he was on high alert when he walked up to Randall's car because Randall had been driving in an area known for drug trafficking and didn't immediately pull over.
Iversen observed an open can of Modelo lime beer in Randall's car and suspected he was drunk, Iversen told the investigators. After he asked Randall to step out of the vehicle, Randall made a 'furtive gesture' with his right hand that made Iversen think he might have a weapon, the deputy told investigators.
He patted down Randall and felt a rectangular, soft object in his pants. When he squeezed it, Iversen said, he felt something small and hard inside that he thought might be a mini revolver.
'At that point, I'm like I have an issue here,' Iversen said in the interview.
Iversen said he threw Randall to the ground because he was concerned the man might be able to reach what he thought was a gun. But Randall was quicker than he was and managed to get back up to his feet, Iversen said.
'At this point in time, I see him running towards me,' Iversen said. 'I'm on my knees and I'm like he's coming at me.'
'I don't want to be caught on my knees with this active guy with a weapon in his waistband,' Iversen added. 'At that point ... survival instinct kicked in, and I drew and fired one round at him.'
After the shooting, Iversen said, he searched Randall's pockets and found a soft glasses case with a meth pipe inside. The dashcam footage doesn't show Iversen finding a pipe — Randall's body is mostly out of the frame — but at one point he does mention it to another deputy.
'It was a f------ meth pipe, man,' Iversen said.
Toxicology testing found that Randall had in his system methamphetamine, marijuana and alcohol, though his blood alcohol level — 0.017 — was far below the legal limit. A crystal-like substance found in his wallet was determined to be meth, according to a state crime lab report.
'There was no threat'
After reviewing the dashcam footage and the Texas Rangers report, two police use-of-force experts contacted by NBC News said they saw no reason for Iversen to open fire during the encounter.
Mickie McComb, a former New Jersey state trooper, said Randall never made any movement that would suggest he was 'drawing or attempting to draw a weapon' and at no point was he 'charging the officer.'
'There was no threat,' added McComb, who now works as an expert witness on use-of-force cases. 'He should have never used deadly force. It was completely uncalled for.'
David Klinger, a former police officer in Los Angeles and Redmond, Washington, offered a similarly blunt assessment.
'It doesn't make any sense why he shot the guy,' said Klinger, a criminology professor at the University of Missouri-St. Louis who researches police shootings.
Klinger said he doesn't understand why Iversen would try to tackle a man whom he believed to be carrying a gun. If he wasn't able to grab the weapon himself, Klinger said, he should have stepped back, drew his own firearm, radioed for back up and ordered the man onto his knees or onto a prone position on the ground.
'You give him verbal commands to keep his hands in plain view,' Klinger added.
McComb said he believes that Iversen would have faced criminal charges — and likely ended up in prison — had the incident occurred in the Northeast.
'It'd be a completely different ball game,' McComb said. 'That's a bad case.'
Grand jury proceedings are held in secret, so it's not clear what evidence was presented.
Micheal Jimerson, the district attorney for Rusk County, did not respond to multiple requests for comment.
'Worst police shooting I've ever seen'
In October 2023, Tippitt filed a federal lawsuit against Iversen and Rusk County alleging constitutional violations for excessive use of force, unlawful detention and false arrest.
At that point, neither Randall's mother nor any member of the public had seen video of the encounter. Last summer, a judge compelled Iversen's lawyers to turn over evidence in the case, which included the dashcam footage.
Iversen then asked a judge to bar the public release of the video, arguing that it could compromise his safety and taint a jury pool. But a judge ruled against him in June 2024.
Tippitt's lawyer, Joseph Oxman, was in his office in Philadelphia when he played the clip for the first time. He said at first he couldn't believe what it showed.
'I think it's the worst police shooting I've ever seen,' Oxman said. 'It looks like an execution.'
The video showed something else that stood out to Oxman.
An early portion indicates that, at the time Randall allegedly ran the flashing stop sign, Iversen was likely too far away from the intersection to see it. Iversen acknowledged as much in his interview with the Texas Rangers, saying he couldn't see the full intersection but knew it well enough to deduce that Randall's vehicle hadn't come to a stop.
'There's no way he could have seen him,' said Oxman, who is an adjunct professor of law at Rutgers University. 'He was over 2,000 feet away.'
The release of the video set off small protests in Rusk County and triggered a flood of angry posts on the sheriff department's Facebook page.
Iversen filed a motion for summary judgment, asking for the case to be thrown out on the grounds of qualified immunity, a legal doctrine that shields police officers from civil lawsuits. He argued that Randall's mother failed to identify any action of his that had violated the constitution and that his conduct was 'objectively reasonable.'
'Sgt. Iversen believed if Randall reached him, Sgt. Iversen would be in a fight for his life, with either Randall's weapon used to injure or kill him, or Randall taking away his own weapons and using them against him,' wrote Iversen's attorneys, Robert Davis and Lee Correa.
In an interview with NBC News, Davis portrayed Randall as the aggressor in the confrontation and called him a 'three time loser,' a term for people who face long prison sentences after getting a third felony conviction.
'I think the suspect made up his mind that he was fleeing,' Davis said. 'If he had to fight the officer or injure the officer, I don't think the suspect cared at all.'
Earlier this year, a federal magistrate judge in Texas took a different view and recommended that Iversen's motion for summary judgment be denied. The judge, John Love, wrote that based on the evidence presented, "a reasonable juror could find" that:
"The use of deadly force was excessive as the crimes at issue were minor non-violent crimes (e.g., traffic violation, open container, possession)."
"[Randall's] resistance was not physical towards [Iversen]."
"And [Randall] was unarmed with his hands empty and open while Defendant Iversen shot him from a kneeling position as [Randall] was turning to run away."
A district judge is expected to make a decision in the coming days, which will determine if the case moves forward. (Rusk County was previously removed from the case after a judge granted its motion for a dismissal.)
On the night he was killed, Randall had gone out to the Texas Player's Club, a local sports bar. When the police car pulled up behind him, he told his mother he was worried that his car might be impounded because it had expired tags, she said.
'I was about four minutes away,' Tippitt said. 'I told him I'd be right there.'
By the time she arrived, an officer was setting up police tape.
'I had this horrible, horrible feeling,' she recalled before breaking down.
She saw her son's car at the top of a hill, its door open. But she couldn't muster the strength to drive any closer. So she went to her nephew's house — where Randall had been heading — and then the two of them returned to the scene together.
At that point, Tippitt saw officers covering Randall's body with a sheet. Tippitt said one of them told her: 'Go home and be with your family.'
'My family was laying in the road!' Tippitt told NBC News, her voice rising in anger.
Since that night, she has struggled to sleep and to get out of bed. She often finds herself dwelling on her son's final moments. One moment in particular.
In the second or two before he was fatally shot, he uttered two words to Iversen, the last he would ever speak.

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Daily Mail
29-04-2025
- Daily Mail
Texas deputy's unbelievable reaction to shooting dead unarmed man during traffic stop
A Texas police officer who shot and killed an unarmed man who ran a red light had a despicable reaction to taking his life. Sergeant Shane Iversen, 57, of the Rusk County Sheriff's Office gunned down Timothy Michael Randall, 29, after pulling him over on September 14, 2022. After realizing Randall was dead, the since-retired cop made an unsettling call to a colleague. 'I just smoked a dude,' he said in an eerily calm tone, as caught on dash cam video. Randall was on the phone with his mother, Wendy Tippitt, when Iversen pulled him over just after 12:30am in Henderson. She never expected the cut-short call to be the last time she would ever speak with her son. Parked on the side of the road, Iversen approached his red Nissan Altima and asked Randall to step out of the car, as seen on dash cam footage that shows the moments leading up to and following Randall's death. Randall placed his wallet in his back pocket and adjusted his waistband as he stood up. The since-retired officer moved Randall's arms on top of the vehicle and started patting him down - digging his hands into his pants - before the situation escalated. 'I don't have anything on me, officer,' Randall said in a panic. 'Put your hands behind your back,' Iversen responded as Randall asked why he was being arrested. Iversen was seen body slamming Randall to the ground and wrestling with him - with both of them toppling over each other. When Iversen let go of Randall, who then stood up to run, the officer whipped out his gun and fired with no hesitation. After bullets rang through the quiet neighborhood, Randall sprinted off before dropping dead face-down the road. Iversen walked up to Randall's body and said 'dude, are you okay?' realizing in that moment that he was not. The officer called for an ambulance before rushing back to his cop car and driving to Randall's body. When emergency services arrived, Iversen made the disturbing call to notify his colleague he had 'smoked' Randall. Iversen was never criminally charged for the shooting, and he quietly retired shortly afterwards, NBC reported. An autopsy revealed the single bullet ravaged Randall's insides - ripping through his ribs, heart and lungs. His heartbroken mother had spent weeks after the fatal incident demanding answers, or simply any information to help her make sense of what happened to her child. 'No one was telling us anything,' Tippitt recalled to NBC. She remained in the dark until she filed a federal lawsuit in 2023 - leading to the release of the jaw-dropping dash cam footage last summer, which Iversen battled to keep concealed. Tippitt has claimed her son's constitutional rights were violated when he was killed. 'The only person that was attacking anybody was Sergeant Iversen attacking my son,' Tippitt said. The video also did not go over well with the Rusk County community, who has rallied and protested on Randall's behalf since its release. 'Well, I think the video shows clearly one of the worst acts of police misconduct in US history. And that conduct was murder,' Joseph Oxman, an attorney representing the Randall family, told CBS 19. 'Everything that he did was aggressive action against my client. He's the one who grabbed him. Iverson's the one who threw him down. 'Everything that Iverson did was to escalate the situation.' When Iversen tried to get the lawsuit tossed, a judge refused, writing 'a reasonable juror could conclude that Defendant Iversen's actions were objectively unreasonable.' The Rusk County Sheriff's Office said in a press release Randall had an open can of beer in the car. Iversen's lawyer Robert Davis said Randall had a meth pipe in his pants. He claimed Iversen believed it was a handgun. A post-mortem toxicology exam revealed Randall had meth, marijuana and alcohol in his system. His blood alcohol content was 0.017, which is below the legal limit. Meth was found in his wallet as well, NBC reported. 'This officer is a retired Army veteran, 27 years special forces, and is now retired from law enforcement. So not somebody who takes life and death situations lightly,' Davis said. 'Sgt. Iversen believed if Randall reached him, Sgt. Iversen would be in a fight for his life, with either Randall's weapon used to injure or kill him, or Randall taking away his own weapons and using them against him,' Davis and fellow attorney Lee Correa wrote to NBC. reached out to Davis for comment. A district judge is set to decide in the coming days if the court will be moving forward with the lawsuit against Iversen. Randall's loved ones created a GoFundMe page after he passed away, which raised more than $3,300 for funeral arrangements. 'Mike as we all knew him was a great man all around. He was funny, he was the light of the show and he lit up a room with his smile,' the page reads. 'Mike was a father, a son, an uncle a brother, and an outstanding guy that many of us could count on.'


NBC News
29-04-2025
- NBC News
After killing unarmed man, Texas deputy told colleague: 'I just smoked a dude'
HENDERSON, Texas — Timothy Michael Randall was on the phone with his mother when a police car pulled up behind his Nissan Altima with its lights flashing. It was just after 12:30 a.m. on Sept. 14, 2022, and Randall was heading to his cousin's house after a night out. 'He had called to let me know that he was going to be home a few minutes later,' Randall's mother, Wendy Tippitt, recalled. 'So I wouldn't worry.' Randall, 29, pulled over and hung up with his mom. Sgt. Shane Iversen of the Rusk County Sheriff's Office walked up to the Altima and told Randall that he had run a stop sign, police dash camera footage shows. Randall denied doing so, and Iversen ordered him out of the car. What began as a routine traffic stop, on a country road two hours east of Dallas, quickly spun out of control. As Randall was stepping out of the car, he put his wallet in his back pocket and adjusted his waistband. Iversen dug his hands into the front of Randall's pants and then told him to put his hands behind his back, the dash cam footage shows. Randall kept his arms raised. 'Officer, I don't have anything on me,' he said. 'Officer, please, can you tell me what I'm under arrest for?' Randall asked moments later. Iversen didn't respond. Instead, he wrestled Randall to the pavement. 'Officer, please,' Randall pleaded again as he struggled to get to his feet. Then Iversen threw Randall to the ground again. He landed on his back several feet away, but the momentum brought him back to his feet. Randall began to turn to run away from Iversen, who had already pulled out his gun and was pointing it at Randall. 'Get down,' Iversen yelled as he fired one shot, striking Randall in the chest. Randall continued to run down the street but collapsed face down. Iversen radioed for help and then tried to render medical aid, but Randall died on the pavement. The bullet had torn through his ribs, lungs and heart, according to autopsy records. After another deputy arrived minutes later, Iversen, then 57, returned to his patrol car and phoned a colleague. 'I just smoked a dude,' he said in a hushed voice. In the following days and weeks, Randall's mother searched for answers in vain, calling the Texas Rangers and the Rusk County district attorney's office. She had no idea how her son wound up dead after a police traffic stop. 'No one was telling us anything,' said Tippitt, who was born and raised in Rusk County and now cleans houses for a living. Her first shock came two months after the shooting when a grand jury returned a no bill in the case, meaning it chose not to indict Iversen for killing an unarmed man. The second came last summer when Iversen's lawyers turned over the dashcam video after she filed a federal lawsuit. Nearly two years after the shooting, she finally got to see, in brutal detail, what happened in the moments before her youngest son was killed. 'The only person that was attacking anybody was Sgt. Iversen attacking my son,' Tippitt said. Iversen quietly retired after the shooting and fought in court to keep the video from being made public. Its release sparked a backlash in rural Rusk County. It also set Randall's mother on a crusade to get justice for his killing. But whether that will happen — and what it would even look like — remains to be seen. 'Survival instinct kicked in' In every year of the past decade, roughly 1,000 people have been shot and killed by police in the U.S., according to a database created by The Washington Post. The vast majority of these shootings don't make national headlines. Many involve a person who was armed at the time or who acted aggressively toward officers. Randall was not armed, and the video shows he was not aggressive toward Iversen. Yet the case has received little attention outside Rusk County — leaving Randall's family to process his killing alone and further reinforcing their feeling that, to the police and outside world, his life didn't matter. 'Me and my family, we don't come from money,' said Randall's older brother Douglas, an Army veteran who served for 10 years. Their parents divorced when the boys were toddlers, and their mother worked several jobs — customer service rep, waitress, school lunch lady — to keep the family afloat while raising the boys alone. 'No one has said an apology in Rusk County,' Douglas added. 'No one has shown remorse.' When their paths crossed in the fall of 2022, Randall and Iversen were at very different stages of life. Randall had struggled to find his footing after graduating from high school, where he played football and basketball. He found work as a welder but was arrested a handful of times on drug possession charges, leading to two felony convictions and two stints in prison. Despite spending three years behind bars, Randall remained easygoing and optimistic, family members said. He was working in construction at the time of the shooting and had recently moved in with his mother following a break-up. 'He always tried to look at the positive,' his mother said. 'He was just an upbeat, happy person.' Iversen was nearing the end of his law enforcement career. By the time he pulled over Randall, he had been working as a police officer for 13 years, first in Dallas and then in Rusk County, where he was hired in 2020. He was also a decorated Army special forces soldier who served in Iraq and Afghanistan. Iversen's military career began in 1986 with the Marines. He later joined the Army and then served in special forces, rising to the rank of senior sergeant, military records show. He deployed to Afghanistan for four months in 2003 and then to Iraq from April 2007 to September 2008 — earning a Bronze Star for valor, the fourth highest military decoration. Two days after the killing, Iversen sat for an interview with the Texas Rangers, the agency that investigates police shootings. Reflecting on his military career, he said he was involved in one or two 'direct fire engagements' in Afghanistan and at least 10 in Iraq. 'Those were most of the raids that we did,' he said about his time in Iraq, according to a transcript obtained by NBC News. Iversen told the investigators he was on high alert when he walked up to Randall's car because Randall had been driving in an area known for drug trafficking and didn't immediately pull over. Iversen observed an open can of Modelo lime beer in Randall's car and suspected he was drunk, Iversen told the investigators. After he asked Randall to step out of the vehicle, Randall made a 'furtive gesture' with his right hand that made Iversen think he might have a weapon, the deputy told investigators. He patted down Randall and felt a rectangular, soft object in his pants. When he squeezed it, Iversen said, he felt something small and hard inside that he thought might be a mini revolver. 'At that point, I'm like I have an issue here,' Iversen said in the interview. Iversen said he threw Randall to the ground because he was concerned the man might be able to reach what he thought was a gun. But Randall was quicker than he was and managed to get back up to his feet, Iversen said. 'At this point in time, I see him running towards me,' Iversen said. 'I'm on my knees and I'm like he's coming at me.' 'I don't want to be caught on my knees with this active guy with a weapon in his waistband,' Iversen added. 'At that point ... survival instinct kicked in, and I drew and fired one round at him.' After the shooting, Iversen said, he searched Randall's pockets and found a soft glasses case with a meth pipe inside. The dashcam footage doesn't show Iversen finding a pipe — Randall's body is mostly out of the frame — but at one point he does mention it to another deputy. 'It was a f------ meth pipe, man,' Iversen said. Toxicology testing found that Randall had in his system methamphetamine, marijuana and alcohol, though his blood alcohol level — 0.017 — was far below the legal limit. A crystal-like substance found in his wallet was determined to be meth, according to a state crime lab report. 'There was no threat' After reviewing the dashcam footage and the Texas Rangers report, two police use-of-force experts contacted by NBC News said they saw no reason for Iversen to open fire during the encounter. Mickie McComb, a former New Jersey state trooper, said Randall never made any movement that would suggest he was 'drawing or attempting to draw a weapon' and at no point was he 'charging the officer.' 'There was no threat,' added McComb, who now works as an expert witness on use-of-force cases. 'He should have never used deadly force. It was completely uncalled for.' David Klinger, a former police officer in Los Angeles and Redmond, Washington, offered a similarly blunt assessment. 'It doesn't make any sense why he shot the guy,' said Klinger, a criminology professor at the University of Missouri-St. Louis who researches police shootings. Klinger said he doesn't understand why Iversen would try to tackle a man whom he believed to be carrying a gun. If he wasn't able to grab the weapon himself, Klinger said, he should have stepped back, drew his own firearm, radioed for back up and ordered the man onto his knees or onto a prone position on the ground. 'You give him verbal commands to keep his hands in plain view,' Klinger added. McComb said he believes that Iversen would have faced criminal charges — and likely ended up in prison — had the incident occurred in the Northeast. 'It'd be a completely different ball game,' McComb said. 'That's a bad case.' Grand jury proceedings are held in secret, so it's not clear what evidence was presented. Micheal Jimerson, the district attorney for Rusk County, did not respond to multiple requests for comment. 'Worst police shooting I've ever seen' In October 2023, Tippitt filed a federal lawsuit against Iversen and Rusk County alleging constitutional violations for excessive use of force, unlawful detention and false arrest. At that point, neither Randall's mother nor any member of the public had seen video of the encounter. Last summer, a judge compelled Iversen's lawyers to turn over evidence in the case, which included the dashcam footage. Iversen then asked a judge to bar the public release of the video, arguing that it could compromise his safety and taint a jury pool. But a judge ruled against him in June 2024. Tippitt's lawyer, Joseph Oxman, was in his office in Philadelphia when he played the clip for the first time. He said at first he couldn't believe what it showed. 'I think it's the worst police shooting I've ever seen,' Oxman said. 'It looks like an execution.' The video showed something else that stood out to Oxman. An early portion indicates that, at the time Randall allegedly ran the flashing stop sign, Iversen was likely too far away from the intersection to see it. Iversen acknowledged as much in his interview with the Texas Rangers, saying he couldn't see the full intersection but knew it well enough to deduce that Randall's vehicle hadn't come to a stop. 'There's no way he could have seen him,' said Oxman, who is an adjunct professor of law at Rutgers University. 'He was over 2,000 feet away.' The release of the video set off small protests in Rusk County and triggered a flood of angry posts on the sheriff department's Facebook page. Iversen filed a motion for summary judgment, asking for the case to be thrown out on the grounds of qualified immunity, a legal doctrine that shields police officers from civil lawsuits. He argued that Randall's mother failed to identify any action of his that had violated the constitution and that his conduct was 'objectively reasonable.' 'Sgt. Iversen believed if Randall reached him, Sgt. Iversen would be in a fight for his life, with either Randall's weapon used to injure or kill him, or Randall taking away his own weapons and using them against him,' wrote Iversen's attorneys, Robert Davis and Lee Correa. In an interview with NBC News, Davis portrayed Randall as the aggressor in the confrontation and called him a 'three time loser,' a term for people who face long prison sentences after getting a third felony conviction. 'I think the suspect made up his mind that he was fleeing,' Davis said. 'If he had to fight the officer or injure the officer, I don't think the suspect cared at all.' Earlier this year, a federal magistrate judge in Texas took a different view and recommended that Iversen's motion for summary judgment be denied. The judge, John Love, wrote that based on the evidence presented, "a reasonable juror could find" that: "The use of deadly force was excessive as the crimes at issue were minor non-violent crimes (e.g., traffic violation, open container, possession)." "[Randall's] resistance was not physical towards [Iversen]." "And [Randall] was unarmed with his hands empty and open while Defendant Iversen shot him from a kneeling position as [Randall] was turning to run away." A district judge is expected to make a decision in the coming days, which will determine if the case moves forward. (Rusk County was previously removed from the case after a judge granted its motion for a dismissal.) On the night he was killed, Randall had gone out to the Texas Player's Club, a local sports bar. When the police car pulled up behind him, he told his mother he was worried that his car might be impounded because it had expired tags, she said. 'I was about four minutes away,' Tippitt said. 'I told him I'd be right there.' By the time she arrived, an officer was setting up police tape. 'I had this horrible, horrible feeling,' she recalled before breaking down. She saw her son's car at the top of a hill, its door open. But she couldn't muster the strength to drive any closer. So she went to her nephew's house — where Randall had been heading — and then the two of them returned to the scene together. At that point, Tippitt saw officers covering Randall's body with a sheet. Tippitt said one of them told her: 'Go home and be with your family.' 'My family was laying in the road!' Tippitt told NBC News, her voice rising in anger. Since that night, she has struggled to sleep and to get out of bed. She often finds herself dwelling on her son's final moments. One moment in particular. In the second or two before he was fatally shot, he uttered two words to Iversen, the last he would ever speak.


The Independent
24-03-2025
- The Independent
Texas Lottery Commission holding out on paying $83.5M to winner over technicality
A Texan woman who recently scooped the $83.5 million jackpot on the lottery may never receive her winnings, officials have warned. The Austin resident, who remains anonymous, spent $20 on Texas lotto tickets for the February 17 draw using the app Jackpocket. Jackpocket is a third-party vendor—known as an online lottery courier—that allows customers to buy tickets and scratch-offs remotely for a fee. Seven days after her victory, lottery officials in Texas announced that they were moving forward with an investigation into two separate major wins due to money laundering concerns. Despite this development coming after her win, lottery officials are still withholding payment. An estimated two million Texans use lottery courier services. The woman made the trip to the lottery's headquarters in Austin last Tuesday, hoping to collect her winnings, but she was sent away empty-handed. 'I've gone through frustration and being sad and stressed, and now I'm just angry,' she recently told the Austin America-Statesman in the presence of her lawyer, Randy Howry. 'I literally spent $20. I didn't spend $26 million to run every single possible combination of numbers.' The Texas Lottery Commission 's Executive Director Ryan Mindell was sharply criticized during a Texas Senate Finance Committee hearing on February 12 after a group used lottery couriers to bulk purchase more than $25 million in tickets to buy 99 percent of the possible combination of numbers, clinching a $95 million jackpot in April 2023. On February 24, the TLC said it would move forward with making lottery courier services illegal in the state after initially stating it didn't have the power to change legislation. The commission also said it proposed a rule change to revoke the licenses of retailers working with third-party operators. The same day, Texas Governor Greg Abbott directed Texas Rangers to investigate her lottery win and the 2023 jackpot win. Two days later, Texas Attorney General Ken Paxman announced his own investigation into the two 'suspicious' wins. According to the woman's lawyer, the TLC's general counsel said that the commission would not decide whether to pay out the winnings until the Texas Rangers complete their investigation. The woman maintains she is the rightful winner of last month's draw. 'Sometimes there are reasons to investigate things, but I don't think mine is one of them,' she told a Nextstar on Wednesday. 'This is an opportunity for me to do other things with my life and I want to be able to go do those,' she said. Howry, who also said his client did no wrongdoing, added: 'We played by all the rules, and we're still playing by all the rules and we expect that my client should be paid.' The woman's attorney told the local station that if the jackpot was not paid out within three days – the typical time it takes for winnings to be paid out after a winning ticket is presented – his client would consider all options, including litigation. On February 28, four days after the lottery couriers ban, state senators unanimously voted to criminalize them. If passed by the Texas House and signed by Abbott, acting as a courier for pay would be a misdemeanor punishable by up to one year in jail and a fine of up to $4,000. The TLC has been embroiled in scandal in recent years. A panel probed it, accusing its jackpots of being used as a potential vehicle for money laundering. The statute that established the Texas Lottery in 1991 forbids using phones to sell tickets. Senators told lottery representatives that apps similar to Jackpocket could be used by minors or could allow single buyers to purchase vast numbers of tickets in a single drawing with numerous different possible number combinations. A spokesperson for Jackpocket said that it had suspended activity in Texas. 'Despite our proven track record of compliance and commitment to responsible gaming, the Texas Lottery Commission has issued a new policy prohibiting our services, effective immediately,' they told the news station. 'As a result, we are suspending lottery courier operations in Texas.'