Lawsuit alleges trooper used excessive force in 2017 shooting of Canton man
The father of a Canton Township man is suing state police officials in the fatal shooting of his son by a trooper two years ago.
The lawsuit, which was filed Monday in federal court, claims the actions of Trooper Chad Weaver and other agency officials resulted needlessly in the Oct. 1, 2017, death of 34-year-old Anthony E. Gallo, who had suffered a recent head injury and was “acting strangely but not violently” before his mother called 911 “as a mental health call.”
Instead, attorney Noah Geary said Weaver had shot Gallo about 10 times with an assault rifle within a minute and 22 seconds of when Weaver and his partner, Trooper Matthew Shaffer, arrived at the family home on Mark Avenue.
“It should have gone differently, and the troopers had many alternatives to resolve the situation short of killing him, and they didn’t attempt or try any of them,” said Geary, who represents Louis Gallo, Anthony’s father and executor of his son’s estate. “They escalated this.”
A police spokesman at the state police headquarters near Harrisburg declined to comment on the “pending litigation.” So did a representative for Troop B, the Washington County barracks where the defendants are stationed.
The lawsuit names Weaver as a defendant, along with Capt. Joseph Ruggery, three lieutenants – Dale Brown, Steven Driscoll and John Kean – and six other “John Doe” supervisors. The agency itself is not a defendant.
Geary said that Anthony Gallo had been a passenger in a head-on vehicle crash several months earlier. Since then, he’d started acting oddly. His family was thinking about having him involuntarily committed for mental health treatment when his mother, Betty Gray, called 911 that day.
Gray was among the people outside when police arrived, and allegedly told the troopers she didn’t feel endangered and that the AR-15s they were carrying weren’t necessary. In reply, they allegedly told her to “shut the (expletive) up.”
She also told them he was alone inside the trailer when they asked if anyone was with him.
Geary said Gallo was holding a “small paring knife,” but it was unclear why he did so and wasn’t threatening anyone.
The lawsuit accuses Weaver allegedly shot Gallo four or five times in the torso “without any provocation” moments after both troopers went into the trailer. Weaver allegedly shot Gallo with another fusillade of four or five rounds while the wounded man lay on the ground.
The two troopers gave their version of events in recorded statements that were played during a coroner’s inquest last year. According to their account, they allegedly told Gallo, who was standing at the front door when they first saw him, to show his hands.
Instead, he slammed the door shut, so they followed him inside and down a narrow hallway to a bedroom doorway. He allegedly told them to “shoot me” several times, as he ignored commands to drop the knife.
Weaver said in the recording that he “fired four or five rounds and (Gallo) fell back on a bed. He went to get back up and I fired again.” He said he was telling Gallo to drop the knife “the entire time.”
Geary said the man wasn’t a danger to the troopers or anyone else. “At no time did Gallo make a movement towards either Trooper or advance towards them,” he wrote.
The filing contains a count of “deadly/excessive force” against Weaver. Another count claims the remaining defendants of “supervisory liability for deliberate indifference” to Gallo’s constitutional rights, allegedly failing to provide Weaver proper use-of-force training. They also left Weaver, a combat veteran, in his role despite his experiencing post-traumatic stress disorder and allegedly showing “behaviors and tendencies that made it unsuitable for him to be in a position/post wherein he would encounter potentially volatile situations.”
Geary said he named the defendants in their individual capacity because of the immunity that protects them in their official capacity.
Based on the February 2018 inquest, the coroner’s office ruled that the shooting was justified.
Geary called the proceeding a “joke.” He said Weaver and Shaffer weren’t present. Their recorded statements were given to a fellow member of state police.
“(The interviewer’s) suggesting what the answer is, and he’s trying to help them out,” Geary recalled. “In every possible way, the interviewer is trying to help them out and make excuses for them.”
He added that the use of force expert who testified also belonged to the agency.
Geary wasn’t allowed to call or question witnesses, but was allowed to submit his own questions for a county prosecutor to ask during the inquiry.
District Attorney Gene Vittone declined to comment.
Steven Toprani, the coroner’s solicitor who presided at the inquest, said it followed state law.
“We conducted an independent inquiry,” he said, “and it’s really up to the DA’s office what evidence is presented in what fashion.”