SAN ANTONIO — The San Antonio Police Department decided Friday it would pull its detectives from the U.S. Marshals Lone Star Fugitive Task Force, officials from both agencies confirmed Tuesday.
The decision came days after members of the task force fatally shot a wanted man while attempting to apprehend him at a home in the 4400 block of Stetson View near Interstate 37. The task force – comprised of federal, state and local agencies, including the San Antonio Police Department – was attempting to arrest Randy Goodale on a felony warrant last Monday.
Goodale's friends and family shared home surveillance video with KENS 5 shortly after the deadly shooting. KENS 5 is not showing the video because the individual who shared it did not have permission from the owner to give it to KENS 5.
The video appears to contradict the sequence of events San Antonio Police Chief William McManus gave immediately after the shooting.
"When task force members arrived at the scene, they surrounded the individual and he started ramming into occupied police vehicles," McManus told members of the media hours after the shooting. "One of the members of the task force fired, and one member of the SAPD who was there in support, fired."
The video provided by friends suggests the truck that Goodale was in rolled forward and hit law enforcement vehicles after shots were fired, though a trailer blocks the view of the truck Goodale was in when he was shot. Smoke from the tires is seen rising from behind the trailer as the task force moves in.
“(The video) didn’t even get close to telling the story of what happened, so it’s tough to rely on that video to make a determination of what happened," McManus said Tuesday. "Especially with no sound.”
Asked squarely whether he intentionally misled members of the public in the aftermath of the shooting, McManus responded, “No, I never have and I never would.”
McManus said he tries to inform the public of what's going on immediately after critical situations, such as last Monday's officer-involved shooting, as an effort to quell any panic.
"What I know at the time is the information I pass on," McManus explained Tuesday. "The trade off to not being 100% accurate is to not give any information at all if I'm not clear on it."
McManus said the owner of the video has so far refused to share it with police and that the first time he had seen the video was when KENS 5 sent it over to the public information office last week for comment.
“You could only see the roof of the car in the video," McManus said. "You could just see it moving, the smoke coming up—that was about it. Difficult to make any assessment from that video.”
The video doesn't show what marshals and police saw before they fired shots. McManus said he wouldn't speculate on why they shot until the investigation is complete.
McManus said his agency has been working with the U.S. Marshals Service to fill any voids their absence from the task force may cause.
“We had been taking internally about pulling those detectives from the task force, pulling them back under our umbrella as an additional resource," McManus said. "It was some operational issues as well. A combination of those two things. I spoke with the marshal, we met on it, and told her I was pulling the detectives back from the task force.”