Jennings officer resigns after shooting at fleeing car
January 10, 2011
BY KIM BELL

JENNINGS - The top police official in Jennings said Monday that a police officer was not justified when he fired shots last week at a car with a baby inside during a car chase that sprawled over several cities and ended with Velda City's police chief punching the car's driver.

The Jennings officer who fired the shots, David Hauck, resigned on Friday. He had been with the Jennings police force for three years. No one was injured in the shooting.

St. Louis County Police Capt. Troy Doyle, who is the interim police chief for Jennings, said Monday that Hauck violated the city's use-of-force policy.

"He was not justified," Doyle said. "He discharged his weapon at a moving vehicle."

The policy allows an officer to shoot at a moving car only if his life is in jeopardy, Doyle added.

A video of the shooting -- taken from the dashboard camera of the Velda City chief's police car -- verified that the officer's life was not in jeopardy, Doyle said.

Doyle said he plans to release that video to reporters on Monday afternoon. Hauck could not be reached immediately for comment.

The tape from the Velda City police car also captures that department's chief, Col. Daniel Paulino, tussling with the driver of the car after it's stopped. Doyle called Paulino's actions "questionable" but said any investigation would be up to Velda City police. Paulino said his actions were justified.

The car chased at one time or another by several departments had been involved in a traffic stop Tuesday afternoon in Bel-Ridge. As a Bel-Ridge officer talked with the driver outside the car, a woman passenger slid over to the driver's seat and took off, police said.

In her escape, the woman hit a police vehicle with an officer. That officer was uninjured. Bel-Ridge police began a pursuit but stopped because of the driver's 11-month-old child in the car, police say.

Jennings picked up the pursuit on Interstate 70 when a dispatcher said the car's driver was wanted for assaulting a police officer -- hitting the patrol car. But Jennings officers did not know a child was in the vehicle, Doyle said.

At some point Hauck used his department-issued .40-caliber semiautomatic handgun to fire several shots at the tires of the car, Doyle said. Doyle said the car's tires were not shot out.

The Jennings officer chased the car into St. Louis city, and the chase ended at Shreve and Bircher avenues. Paulino, Velda City's chief, was involved in the end of the chase.

He said he tried to pull the woman from the car to take her into custody. But the woman struggled and they ended up fighting, he said.

"She said she was not going to jail," he said.

Paulino said he punched the woman and sustained cuts on his hand in an attempt to subdue the struggling woman. He said he was motivated by concern for the child in the car.

The driver was taken into custody and the child was checked out by paramedics, then released to a family member, according to St. Louis police.

The driver, Latyra Roberts, 23, of St. Louis, has been charged with endangering the welfare of a child and leaving the scene of an accident. Roberts lives in the 1000 block of Gimblin Street.

Hauck could not be reached for comment. An attorney who represented him in a federal lawsuit in 2010 said he was unaware of the recent case and not representing Hauck now.

That 2010 lawsuit against Hauck was filed by a Jennings resident, Cassandra K. Fuller. Fuller, 54, sued the city of Jennings and Hauck in federal court for a civil rights violation. Fuller claimed Hauck beat her in June 2009 when he pulled her off the front porch of her home.

Last month, Fuller settled that suit. There is a confidentiality agreement that bars the parties from discussing the case, said Hauck's lawyer, John Michener.

Fuller said she received a "comfortable amount" of money in the settlement, but she declined to say how much.

Fuller, 54, said she was shocked that Hauck had remained with the department and was involved in the shooting last week.

"Oh my God," she said. "He should've been fired on the spot."

Fuller encountered Hauck on June 9, 2009, when a car smashed into a parked car in front of Fuller's home on Center Avenue in Jennings, she said. As police and residents waited for a tow truck, Hauck told Fuller to move her van.

"I bust out laughing and told him, 'It don't run. You can take it home with you if you want,'" Fuller said.

That angered Hauck, she said.

"He went crazy," she said. "He knocked me down like I was a hardened criminal."

In court records, Fuller alleged that Hauck struck her and forcefully restrained her, and kicked Fuller's 15-year-old daughter when she asked police to let her mother go.

Michener declined to discuss the case on Monday. However, in court records last year, Michener said Hauck denied the allegations of excessive force and said any injuries Fuller and her daughter had were "caused by their own conduct."

Fuller said she was told that Hauck was going to attend an anger-management class.

Doyle, who took over the department in November, said he was unaware of the 2009 incident. Asked if Hauck was ever reprimanded or suspended for any previous incidents, Doyle said he was researching that and would have answers at the afternoon news conference.