Update: On Monday, Marco Puente agreed to a $200,000 settlement in his lawsuit against two police officers with the City of Keller.
On a broiling August day last year, Dillon Puente drove through the Fort Worth suburb of Keller to take his car to a mechanic. The high temperature that day was above 100 degrees and Puente’s air conditioning wasn’t working, so he kept the windows down to stay cool. After he made a right turn onto Main Street, he saw lights from a police car flashing behind him. He pulled over on a side street, near his grandparents’ house. When Blake Shimanek, a white officer, approached his Honda Civic, 22-year-old Puente was scared. He’d seen videos and news stories of cops killing people of color during traffic stops. Puente rolled his window three-quarters of the way up, hoping it would keep him safe.
Shimanek radioed for backup as he approached the vehicle. Puente remembers Shimanek’s hand on his holster. The reason he stopped Dillon, he said, was a wide right turn. Then, “Any reason why you’re rolling your window up when I walked up to this car?”
