BALTIMORE -- Harford County, Maryland, sheriff’s deputies were locked in tense standoff with John Fauver for about five minutes in a Forest Hill parking lot, demanding he get out of his Ford pickup truck and surrender.
Responding to an April 23 call about a suicidal man who was potentially armed, deputies rushed to the suburban shopping center where he was seen in his pickup truck. There, they encountered a defiant and at times belligerent Fauver, 53, according to body-worn and dashboard camera footage released Thursday morning by the Maryland Office of the Attorney General’s Independent Investigations Division.
“I’m so ready to die, man,” Fauver told deputies, who managed to corner him after he jumped a curb in his truck and sped away during their first attempt to stop him.
The deputies urged Fauver to calm down and stop reaching for things in his truck. They said they didn’t want to hurt him. But then Fauver appeared to raise his arms and a long object in the direction of deputies, several of whom were wielding long guns and standing in front of Fauver.
“It’s a cane. It’s cane. It’s a cane,” shouted Sgt. Bradford Sives, whose bodycam footage is shown in much of the released video.
A deputy standing much farther away, whose bodycam footage also was shared, yelled: “He’s reaching, he’s reaching. He’s got a gun! He’s got the gun!”
That deputy then appears to fire his handgun first. Several gun blasts appeared to follow.
The video from Sives’ camera shows him firing his shotgun at least twice before calling out for a ceasefire.
Dashcam video from another deputy’s vehicle appears to show Fauver pointing an object toward deputies from behind door of his pickup.
Harford County State’s Attorney Albert Peisinger Jr. already determined that deputies’ use of force was necessary, before the unit within the attorney general’s office tasked by Maryland lawmakers with investigating deaths at the hands of police completed its investigation and presented its findings to Peisinger.
Peisinger sent a letter to Sheriff Jeffrey Gahler last week, outlining his belief that Fauver died by “suicide by law enforcement” and that the deputies’ use of force was “necessary and proportional and not unreasonable” given the circumstances, and thus legal. He said his office would not pursue criminal charges against any of the involved deputies.
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