Man killed by police was in midst of a mental health crisis, family says

A knife-wielding man was in the midst of a mental health crisis and wrongly believed his family was dead when he was fatally shot by Las Vegas police this month, according to his grieving mother.

“My son was not a criminal,” Rosa Castillo told the Las Vegas Review-Journal in Spanish.

The mother sat next to a table decorated with candles, religious icons and photos and mementos honoring Ismael Barney Castillo, 29. She had on a baseball cap her son would wear.

“I believe that the police, the system failed me,” she said. “I don’t think police did the right thing, and they don’t have the pain I have now.”

Body-camera video released by the Metropolitan Police Department captured Castillo’s final moments the night of March 13 in the 1000 block of East Flamingo Road.

In the footage, he is heard shouting: “they just killed my family.”

Assistant Sheriff Jamie Prosser said that Sgt. Brett Brosnahan fired half a dozen rounds as the male Castillo “rapidly closed the distance” on the officer, who repeatedly shouted for him to drop the knife.

Rosa Castillo said her son had been diagnosed with bipolar disorder and periodically experienced panic attacks. He lived near the shooting scene with his parents and five of six of his siblings.

Ismael Castillo checked himself into a hospital several times. Most often, however, the crisis would pass after a few days, his mother said.

Castillo was in a depressive state in the days leading up to his death because he was struggling to find a job to provide more to his 7-year-old son, his mother said. He’s also survived by a 12-year-old daughter.

Like previous times, his family had sat with him to advise him to seek professional help. But Castillo was not one to open up, she said.

The family had gone out the day of the tragedy. Castillo’s mother told him to get some fresh air and that they would be back in a couple of hours. When they were delayed, Castillo began calling.

In Rosa Castillo’s teary recollection about their last phone call, she told him they were OK when he blurted out that “something terrible is going to happen to you guys.”

She suggested he call 911 for an ambulance.

Instead, Castillo headed to the Target store in the 4000 block of South Maryland Parkway and robbed someone in the parking lot with a pocket knife, police said.

Castillo then ran inside where he stole what looked like a bread knife. Video from the store shows the agitated man pacing in the business with the unpackaged blade on hand. At one point, Castillo turns away at the sight of a shopper.

Responding to calls about an armed man, police encountered Castillo outside a nearby shopping center. Prosser said that an officer tried shocking the armed man with a stun gun while another officer fired a low-lethal round around the time he was shot.

Rosa Castillo wondered why police did not do more to try to contain her son and arrest him before firing lethal rounds.

“I think that police have a million ways to control the situation and not to solve it by killing them,” she said. “That’s why they’re trained.”

The shooting remains under investigation, during which police typically refrain from comment. In an earlier briefing immediately after the shooting, Prosser said she couldn’t speak about Castillo’s “personal background” when asked about his possible state of mind.

Once home, Castillo’s family panicked when they couldn’t find him. Rosa Castillo tuned into the local nightly news that night and saw a report about a shooting near their house.

She said her motherly instinct immediately signaled that “that’s my son.”

But for the next 20 hours, she visited the shooting scene, hospitals, a police station and the Clark County coroner’s office desperately seeking her son’s whereabouts. It wasn’t until her third visit to the morgue that she identified her son with a photo.

Castillo said she wants her son to be remembered as the good brother, son and friend he was. The man who loved to dance and experiment with food dishes. The motorcycle aficionado who would build them. A quiet, sensitive man who recently mourned the death of his pet snake.

Pausing to cry, Rosa Castillo said she was “sad and hurt because he didn’t have an opportunity to live, he didn’t have an opportunity to get help during a mental crisis.”

Castillo’s family is raising funds for his funeral services.

Contact Ricardo Torres-Cortez at rtorres@reviewjournal.com.