DENVER — A jury trial opened Tuesday for the bystander who livestreamed the police response to the Boulder King Soopers mass shooting last year.
Prosecutors argued Dean Schiller that day obstructed the police response to the shooting, while defense attorneys countered that his actions, while abrasive and perhaps reckless, did not rise to a criminal offense.
Schiller, 44, was charged with a single misdemeanor count of obstructing police after he happened to be at the Table Mesa King Soopers on March 22, 2021, when a shooter opened fire on customers, employees and police, killing 10 people.
Schiller, who regularly films police activity around Boulder, began livestreaming the attack before officers arrived at the grocery store.
He at one point walked to the entrance of the store, where he captured footage of three bodies before he retreated amid the gunfire. He directed police inside when they arrived and also told passersby to stay away. Thousands of people watched the video feed as the attack unfolded.
Over the next 90 minutes, Schiller ignored about 60 different requests from law enforcement to leave the area, Deputy District Attorney Myra Gottl said.
“They tell him to back off — for his safety, for officer safety, so they can focus on doing their job,” she told jurors. “Not once, not twice, not five times, not 10, but a total of 60 times he is told to get out of that crime scene.”
Schiller did sometimes move back when instructed to, but often argued with the officers, yelled at them or cursed at them. He repeatedly told officers he was a journalist. He at one point was escorted out of the crime scene but almost immediately returned, Gottl said.
Schiller’s attorneys, Tiffany Drahota and David Lane, argued that Schiller never physically obstructed the police or threatened to use violence or force to stop them from doing their jobs, and so his actions did not rise to the crime of obstruction.
“Momentary distraction is not obstruction,” Drahota told jurors.
She pointed out that the law requires a person to act knowingly in order to commit the crime of obstruction, and said Schiller had no intention of obstructing officers, and in fact never came between an officer and the grocery store.
“Over and over he does move back,” she said. “But for a certain select few officers, he could never get back far enough. And the evidence will also show multiple officers acquiesced and consented to Mr. Schiller staying here.”
Boulder police Cmdr. Ron Gosage testified for the prosecution Tuesday about officers’ initial response to the shooting. He said police initially believed there were three shooters in the store and felt they were being ambushed when they tried to go inside; officers later became concerned that Schiller’s livestream might alert the shooter to their positions and movements.
Gosage said as he arrived on scene, he told Schiller to leave, but did not take action against Schiller when he refused.
“I told him he needed to leave the area, he refused, and I decided to take the calculated risk and run past him,” Gosage testified, saying he didn’t want to take the time to arrest Schiller. “Our No. 1 priority is to stop people from dying. At that point, we didn’t have control of the scene and people were still dying.”
On cross-examination, Gosage admitted that Schiller never threatened to use violence or force against officers and never physically blocked their paths, and he agreed that filming police officers is legal.
But he said Schiller’s mere presence at the grocery store was an obstruction.
“The mere fact that he was there is an obstacle,” Gosage testified.
The misdemeanor trial in Boulder County District Court will continue with testimony Tuesday afternoon and is expected to last no later than Thursday.
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