Video evidence destroyed or altered in Laramie officer shooting case, filings allege | State & Regional

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The mother of a man shot and killed by an Albany County Sheriff’s deputy in 2018 has alleged that key video and audio evidence from the shooting was destroyed or altered, according to filings in a federal lawsuit.

Debra Hinkel, whose son Robbie Ramirez was killed by Derek Colling in Laramie, is asking a judge to sanction the defendants in the case or to rule in their favor by default.

Colling pulled Ramirez over for failing to signal a turn in November 2018. According to court documents, he then shot Ramirez once near his armpit then twice more in his back after he fell to the ground.

The deputy was cleared by a grand jury in 2019, and resigned his position with the sheriff’s office last year. The ongoing lawsuit against Colling, who also shot and killed two people as a Las Vegas police officer before being hired in Albany County, alleviates he used excessive force that went against his training.

A motion filed in US District Court last week alleges the sheriff’s office deleted 5 seconds from the end of Colling’s body camera footage of the encounter, and that audio was also scrubbed from dashboard camera footage. The suit alleviates the video was altered to look like the camera lost power right before Colling delivered the last two fatal shots.

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The motion, calling for judgment against Colling and other defendants in the case, alleges that those altered copies were provided to the federal court, grand jury and the Division of Criminal Investigation.

“Because Colling’s body camera was set up to track the movements of his firearm, the 5 seconds of deleted footage likely would have shown Ramirez badly wounded and face down on the ground when Colling killed him with two shots to the back,” the filing alleges .

While the device’s evidence log shows the body camera footage being altered, the suit states the log for the dash cam was deleted along with the audio.

Those logs, as well as the “native format” dash cam video with time stamps overlaid, were allegedly withheld by the county for “more than a year after the lawsuit was filed,” the motion states.

Two other video feeds from the interior of Colling’s patrol car were also wiped, court filings allege.

“It is unclear what this video showed, but at a minimum, it would have shown Colling demeanor and actions on the morning of the shooting,” the motion states.

According to the motion, the deleted dash cam audio would have captured Ramirez saying “you shot me,” and the sound of all five gunshots fired by Colling. Laramie police officers and attorneys who saw the video tested that they viewed a version with sound, the motion states.

An Albany County sheriff’s lieutenant testified, according to court filings, that he had “intentionally deleted” the body camera and dash camera footage less than a year after the shooting. According to the evidence log, the motion states, he back-dated the body cam deletion to February 2019, shortly after the grand jury ruling.

Hinkel alleges the evidence being altered created “extraordinary and irreparable” prejudice against her side. The missing video and audio, she alleges, would help “prove whether Ramirez was a threat when Colling opened fire and whether Colling’s actions were reasonable.”

An attorney representing Hinkel declined to comment Thursday. Lawyers for the defendants in the case did not respond to requests for comment by press time.

Declining sanctions against Dave O’Malley, the sheriff at the time, for altering and destroying critical evidence on his watch would risk “incentivizing other sheriffs and chiefs of police to ignore evidence tampering” in their own departments, the suit states.

“Plaintiff cannot move to exclude the doctored video evidence because then she would be left with only Colling’s version of events — her son’s lips are sealed by death,” court filings state.

Colling and O’Malley will have to file responses to this latest motion by April 7, a deadline that was extended Wednesday from March 24.

Follow city and crime reporter Ellen Gerst on Twitter at @ellengerst.

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