Las Vegas police officer who shot, killed man won’t face charges
The Clark County district attorney’s office has ruled there will be no criminal prosecution of a Las Vegas police sergeant who shot and killed a man last summer, a public fact-finding review announced Friday.
William Fuller, 30, was shot twice and killed by Sgt. Daniella Cino, 33, on Aug. 8 after Cino responded to a call and saw Fuller stabbing a woman outside an apartment complex at 5350 E. Tropicana Avenue.
Police and the DA’s office used footage from Cino’s body camera, recordings of 911 calls and a walk-through of the scene Cino gave to detective Jason Leavitt that night to determine whether the shooting was justified.
Fuller had no criminal history; he was found to have a blood alcohol content of .09 at the time of the shooting. An autopsy determined his cause of death to be a gunshot wound to the abdomen.
Leavitt, the lead detective on the case, said Cino was trained to use her Glock 17 9mm and fire “center body mass” when approached with a deadly weapon, such as a knife.
Leavitt determined that Fuller walked 33 feet toward Cino when she arrived, leaving 13 feet between the two of them when she fired.
“A person with an edged weapon, such as a knife, can reach the officer within a distance of 21 feet faster than the officer can pull their weapon from their holster,” Leavitt said.
Fuller’s mother and two of his siblings were present for the hearing. Carol Garcia told the Review-Journal after the hearing that her son was a health fanatic and an avid churchgoer.
“There was no reason for him to lose his life,” she said. “My son is not evil. He is not a killer.”
Shantay Edwards, Fuller’s oldest sister, said her brother and the stabbing victim, who has recovered, had been together 10 years and lived with their four children, all under the age of 7 at the time of the attack. The two had recently gotten engaged.
“They left him to bleed out in the street,” Edwards said of the officers who responded. “I thought every life mattered.”
Contact Sabrina Schnur at sschnur@reviewjournal.com or 702-383-0278. Follow @sabrina_schnur on Twitter.
