Police, prosecutors defend investigation into fatal shooting

Prince William County Police and prosecutors are resisting calls from activists to commission an independent investigation of the fatal shooting of a 15-year-old boy in Haymarket last month, insisting that the shooting was justified even in the face of intense criticism.

County police say Officer Robert Choyce, a seven-year veteran of the department, shot Ruben Urbina outside his family’s townhome on Sept. 15. The boy had called 911 and claimed to be holding his family hostage with a bomb strapped to his chest, and officers discovered him wielding a 3-foot long crowbar.

Commonwealth’s Attorney Paul Ebert, who investigated the incident, said Urbina struck his brother’s girlfriend with the crowbar before moving toward officers. Ebert says the officers gave the teenager clear commands to stop and couldn’t have used non-lethal means to subdue him, so the county’s top prosecutor declined to pursue criminal charges against Choyce.

But Urbina’s family disputes that version of events, although they’re mum on the details as they confer with lawyers on possible legal action. In the meantime, several activist groups in the county have offered to advocate on their behalf, calling for an independent investigation of the incident from outside Prince William.

“It just takes away any kind of bias or subjectivity, and it just takes the burden off them,” said Atif Qarni, a county middle school teacher and former candidate for the General Assembly. “If the community is asking for it, I don’t see what the harm is.”

In particular, Qarni has suggested that the Virginia State Police re-examine the shooting, because the agency has investigated other officer-involved shootings around the state. State police spokeswoman Corinne Geller says the agency could indeed take on such a case, but its policy is to do so only if the head of the local agency involved requests such an intervention.

County police spokesman Sgt. Jonathan Perok said those kinds of requests tend to come from smaller departments that might not have the resources to investigate an officer-involved shooting on their own. That’s not the case for a large locality such as Prince William, Perok said, and the department feels “very confident” with Ebert’s review of the case.

“We understand that some folks won’t be OK with this, ever,” Perok said. “But that doesn’t change the facts.”

Should new information come to light, Perok suggested that police could run it by Ebert, who could then ask for an independent review. As of now, Ebert doesn’t foresee that happening.

“I was elected to make these kinds of decisions, and that’s what I did,” Ebert said. “If something new comes to my attention, I will look at it...but there’s no question in my mind that was a justified shooting.”

Ebert also believes the officers stopped Urbina from “endangering the life” of his brother’s girlfriend. Police say Urbina struck her with the crowbar before moving aggressively toward the officers.

“But for these officers, we would’ve had a dead woman,” Ebert said.

But Qarni says that both Urbina’s brother, Oscar, and his girlfriend dispute those claims. Ebert says his investigator interviewed both during his review of the incident, but Qarni says the pair remains “adamant that the shooting was unjustified.”

“They’re shocked he was shot,” Qarni said. “They don’t understand it.”

Qarni contends that if the police and Ebert are so confident about their version of events, there should be no reason why they wouldn’t want an independent investigation. He says Urbina’s diminutive build and his mental health — Ebert says the teenager tried to commit suicide the night before the shooting — inject uncertainty into the whole situation.

“Maybe after all this information is analyzed and a third party interviews the witnesses again, they come back and say it’s justified,” Qarni said. “But this will just put everybody at ease. Right now, there’s a distrust, because we’re constantly seeing young kids of color get shot.”

Supervisor Frank Principi, D-Woodbridge, has joined the call for an independent investigation, but reaction among other members of the board of supervisors has been mixed. At-Large Chairman Corey Stewart, a Republican, declined comment on the situation, while Supervisor Marty Nohe, R-Coles, suggested it would be up to Ebert to make such a decision.

“The board really can’t ask for an investigation, because we’re directly in the chain of command for the police department,” Nohe said. “If people want to see another investigation, they should say to [Ebert], ‘We elected you, now serve us.’”

Meanwhile, Qarni and his fellow activists are also pressing the department to release recordings of Urbina’s 911 call. Police have declined to do so, but Perok said the department is weighing whether to release the tape now.

“No one has heard that tape yet...and it’s this lack of transparency that has made this problematic,” Qarni said.

Perok insists that the department has done everything it can to be open in the wake of the shooting, including issuing prompt statements to the media and releasing more detailed descriptions of the department’s investigation into this shooting than it might for other incidents.

Yet Qarni, who’s worked with county police Chief Barry Barnard to strengthen the department’s relationship with Prince William’s Muslim community, believes the county has a ways to go to build trust in the wake of the shooting. At the very least, he’d like to see the police department automatically ask for an independent review of any officer-involved shooting, so as to avoid this sort of back and forth.

“Whenever there is an incident of this nature, it should be handled by an independent group from the outside,” Qarni said. “To me, it seems logical.”