I'll be honest: With the facts at play in the death of 22-year-old Joshua Feast, I would normally be hesitant to cover it. The picture authorities have painted didn’t exactly portray Feast as a faultless victim. He had pointed a gun at a Texas police officer on Dec. 9 when the officer fired one shot and killed Feast in the city of La Marque, which is about 40 miles south of Houston, Galveston County Sheriff Henry Trochesset told Galveston County Daily News. The father of two, a felon, was out on bond after being arrested on the accusation that he unlawfully possessed a firearm. He was wanted on three felony warrants of misdemeanor assault, evading arrest, and theft, and he was believed to be a person of interest in multiple local shootings, the Houston Chronicle reported.
Here’s the thing though: If Feast was no innocent, Jose Santos, the La Marque police officer who fired the deadly shot, surely isn’t. Santos, however, is still alive.
Santos, who is on routine administrative leave while the Galveston County Sheriff’s Office investigates the shooting, was named in a lawsuit filed on Aug. 12, 2013 when he was employed with the Galveston Police Department. In that suit obtained by both the Courthouse News Service and the Houston Chronicle, Santos and fellow officer Archie Chapman Jr. are accused of brutally beating a man for doing little more than falling asleep in his car without a camping permit. Dash camera video that civil rights attorney Ben Crump released showed officers kicking Reginald Deon Davis, 34, repeatedly and forcing his head underwater.
Davis was in the area attending a friend's party, and he had decided to later squeeze in some last-minute cramming for a college test at a local Denny's restaurant, the Courthouse News Service reported on the lawsuit. He said he left the restaurant on March 19, 2013 around 1 AM and started driving home, but decided to instead pull over along a seawall when he noticed he was too tired to drive. He called his wife to tell her he would be returning home "later than expected" and he slept until Santos woke him up about 45 minutes later, the news service reported. Davis complied with the officer’s request of him to get out of the car and allowed Santos to search him, but upon the officer's request to search Davis' vehicle, he ran, fearing arrest, the news service reported of the lawsuit.
At that point, Santos shocked Davis with a Taser, hit him in the back, and knocked him to the ground, Davis alleges in the lawsuit. The dash camera video shows Davis, a Black man, lying on his stomach in the sand, only moving when waves submerged his face under water, the suit alleges.
“At this point, another officer, who is believed to be Officer Archie Chapman, appears in the video and immediately kicks Mr. Davis in the head multiple times and even appears to purposefully submerge Mr. Davis’s face under water,” the court news service reported of court documents. “Then, both officers proceed to strike Mr. Davis’s head numerous times with their fists.
“As Officers Santos and Chapman assaulted Mr. Davis, three more officers arrived on scene, and Mr. Davis received more blows from these officers while simultaneously having his head forcibly submerged under water at different times.” Davis reportedly told officers, “‘I can’t breathe’” and, “‘You’re trying to drown me.’”
Still, the excessive force case against the police department was quietly dismissed in October 2013 when a court deemed police action reasonable. Santos resigned without reason from the Galveston Police Department two months later, city spokeswoman Marissa Barnett told Galveston County Daily News. The La Marque Police Department hired Santos in October 2014.
Crump, who is representing Feast’s family, demanded that authorities release body camera footage of the recent shooting. “Now that Jose Santos has been identified as the police officer who killed Joshua Feast, we are left with even more questions and very few answers,” Crump said in a statement released Wednesday. He asked why Santos was ever permitted to wear a badge after the incident in 2013. “Joshua Feast would still be alive today if the La Marque Police Department had done the right thing by demanding that their officers be individuals of sound moral character – not individuals like Jose Santos who had a documented history of tormenting and harming his fellow man,” Crump said. “It was all but promised that Santos would use excessive force again as it had been previously condoned.”
“We won’t stop until all video, inc. body cam footage, is released from the fatal shooting of Joshua Feast by officer Jose Santos,” Crump added in a tweet Sunday. “Justice is NOT possible if the investigation continues to operate in secrecy, leaving the public – and Joshua’s family – in the dark.”
An initial report local news station KHOU cited indicated officers opened fire on Feast while he was running away. He had earlier been sitting in his car, police said. It’s unclear what prompted him to get out and run, but officers were slow to call for medical help, neighbors told reporters. Feast’s cousin James Simpson told the Chronicle onlookers gathered in the street after the shooting. “They were screaming at the police,” Simpson said. “The police was like, ‘We aren’t calling anybody until all these people in the street stop yelling.’”
Crump called Santos' actions "criminal and derelict in duty as a first responder" in one tweet. “Witnesses report Santos refused to render aid to Joshua after shooting him AND then kicked his body, already debilitated by the bullet,” the attorney said in another tweet.
Feast died after he was taken to a local hospital, KHOU reported. Area resident Gail Gee told the Houston Chronicle she heard Santos saying, “'Talk to me, Josh,'” after the shooting, "as if he had seen him slipping away." Gee said, “I don’t think he meant to kill him.” NAACP Dickinson member Madalyn Salazar told KHOU what happened to Feast is “a symptom of what has been occurring here, the lack of relationship that the La Marque police department has with its citizens here.” Several community members are asking La Marque Police Chief Kirk Jackson to resign. Although the police department hasn’t released any statement on that request, Mayor Pro Tem Keith Bell shared condolences with Feast's family at a press conference Thursday.
“This is a tragedy and a sad day in our community,” he said. “We are all mourning the loss of this young man, regardless of the circumstances. As we grieve together, I hope we can allow for space and time for the investigation to unfold.
“Transparency will prevail, and the truth will come out. There will be a time for us to verify, to ask questions about the findings of the investigation and I promise you as a leader in this community, I will make sure those questions are addressed.”