David McAtee slaying: Police action marred by 'poor communication,' confusion and mistakes
LOUISVILLE, Ky. — Moments before she watched her uncle die, Machelle McAtee was standing in the doorway of his YaYa's BBQ eatery when a stream of strangers suddenly rushed in.
Seconds later, she saw a police officer pointing a gun at her and felt the sting of projectiles hitting her three times before her uncle, David McAtee, grabbed her and pulled her inside.
Louisville Metro Police Officer Katie Crews had shot her at close range with pepper balls — a "less lethal" crowd control weapon — even though Crews later admitted Machelle wasn't doing much of anything except standing there.
"She was standing, I wouldn’t say in an aggressive manner, but … she was not going to go inside," Crews described to investigators five days later.
"After giving her verbal commands, I did shoot more pepper balls in her direction. She still refused, so I did shoot off more.”
Crews' actions provoked a series of events that ended with National Guard members fatally shooting McAtee when he fired his handgun after seeing his niece hit. Crews remains on the force, though prosecutors say she violated police policy.
But Crews' pepper ball shots weren't the only missteps LMPD officers made that night.
'A tragedy': Family of shooting victim David McAtee sues Louisville police and Kentucky National Guard
The Courier Journal reviewed radio transmissions, MetroSafe records and more than 30 hours of body camera footage from 64 officers at the scene the night of June 1, 2020, then asked a policing expert to review some of the footage.
They showed that — as in the Breonna Taylor shooting three months earlier — questionable policing decisions and mistakes plagued the night's events.
Among them:
- At the scene, poor communication among officers led to confusion, and officers and Guard troops moved through the crowd in a way that put them and civilians at risk.
- Crews fired pepper balls in a way that was particularly dangerous, shooting at people who weren't an immediate threat.
- Officers did not wear their body cameras during the initial incident and others turned them off — obliterating the chance to get a more complete and objective record of events.
Machelle McAtee, 35, says her uncle's death could have been avoided had police acted more responsibly, particularly Crews.
Body camera footage from that night shows Machelle had white powder around her ears, neck and shoulder area from the pepper ball residue while in custody. Her eyes were swollen and burning from crying and being hit with the chemical irritant.
"She was wrong," Machelle said of Crews, "and I honestly feel like she's the reason my uncle isn't here today."
'All hell's breaking loose'
The night David McAtee was shot, LMPD officers were operating in the department’s Emergency Operations Center downtown, a room with more than 30 screens where officers monitor live footage from cameras throughout the city.
The night's Breonna Taylor protests downtown had largely died down when Lt. Col. Joshua Judah made the decision to disperse a crowd.
Judah said in his police interview after the slaying that area was a high-crime area with many shootings.
'They were screaming her name': How the first Louisville Breonna Taylor protest came to be
Judah said he first sent in Lt. Col. Andrew McClinton, who reported seeing “a very large unruly crowd” and “a lot of cars, a lot of people” — enough that McClinton told Judah he didn’t feel comfortable sending in his officers.
But a source in the command center told The Courier Journal, which like Paste BN is a part of the Paste BN Network, the crowd wasn't that concerning — it looked like it did every Friday and Saturday. “We kept consistent watch over any problem areas, and so that was one."
Even so, Judah ordered reserve units to join McClinton and instructed officers and Guard members to clear the parking lot, according to Wine's report.
Surveillance video of the dispersal shows at least 30 officers and Guard members pulling up in vans at about 12:15 a.m. on June 1. Most got out and walked around, asking people to leave.
LMPD Lt. Jeffrey Lauder gave a warning to Crews, her fellow officers and Guard members.
"I told the guys, I said just get out calmly … if you jump out and act crazy, they're going to run," Lauder told Maj. Paul Humphrey in a conversation recorded on Humphrey's body camera.
Video published by a Facebook livestreamer showed officers and soldiers asking people walking around to leave — and they were complying when gunfire rang out.
"We came out real slow, walking through the lot. Everyone was leaving; there was no issue. All of a sudden this dude sticks his hand violently out the door and starts cracking off rounds," Lauder said.
Crews issued a pepper ball gun
Crews had been on protest detail for two nights before the McAtee shooting — in fact, all officers were required to work overtime to handle the Breonna Taylor protests.
Body camera footage showed several officers discussing their exhaustion or frustration with having to work so much.
She was part of the group from the Second and Sixth divisions sent to 26th and Broadway as part of Lt. Lauder's group. Crews and several other officers were given pepper ball guns.
Related story: Why most Breonna Taylor protesters arrested by police will never be convicted of a crime
"I don’t know how many pepper ball guns there was total, but we were in different vans, and I was the only one in my van who had one," she told investigators later.
Asked if they're commonly used to disperse crowds, Crews said she's "never been a part of anything like this before."
They shouldn't be used in this way, said Brian Higgins, a former New Jersey police chief and adjunct professor at the John Jay College of Criminal Justice in New York City who spent the last year studying the effect of less-lethal weapons during protests.
Nationally, he said, “standard policy is you don’t fire (pepper balls) indiscriminately into a crowd.”
According to LMPD's procedures, chemical agents can be used when an officer believes a degree of force is necessary to overcome physical resistance or when arrested people attempt to escape, cause injury or damage property.
For crowd control, LMPD procedures authorize the use of pepper ball guns on “actively aggressive” people who are combative or present a physical danger.
That night, no one fit that description.
'I gravitated toward the right'
When she left the unmarked police van, Crews veered from her colleagues, walking around the eastern edge of the parking lot.
“I just gravitated toward the right,” Crews told LMPD and Kentucky State Police in a Public Integrity Unit interview on June 5, 2020. “And I was giving verbal commands to numerous people that I had come across. There was a car of people (and) I said, ‘Hey, you know, you need to leave per the mayor’s orders. The curfew is 9 o’clock.'”
Approximately a minute later, surveillance video captures Crews firing pepper balls as she moved toward YaYa's BBQ.
“When people weren’t going inside the building or making an effort to move, I did shoot off one round of nonlethal pepper ball at the ground. At that time, people did start to disperse,” Crews said.
That's when she encountered Machelle McAtee standing outside the shop.
“And as we made our way closer, there’s a female. After giving her commands still, she refused to go inside. She was standing, I wouldn’t say in an aggressive manner, but … she was not going to go inside."
Machelle McAtee told The Courier Journal she never heard any verbal commands that night. Besides, she said, she was on her uncle's private property.
"Why did she shoot me?" Machelle asked. "Because I was aggressive? I didn't do a damn thing to this woman. I was not a threat to her."
City surveillance footage from that night showed Crews was the only officer firing a pepper ball gun or using any other force to clear the parking lot.
“It was just a lot of cars, there was a lot of people in general," she said in her interview. "And I think everyone, including the civilians and ourselves, I mean, the tension are high to begin with. … To me, it felt like the tensions were high for everyone.”
Surveillance video shows Crews continuously firing pepper balls as she stood at the edge of McAtee's property. Some knocked items off a table outside the door and some went into the house.
Three hit Machelle, including one on the neck, which is prohibited in the department's standard operating procedures.
Crews described how Machelle, who she didn't know, was pulled by her arm into the building by a “Black male that had white on his shirt.”
“And that’s whenever I started seeing the muzzle flash of a gun he shot at us,” she said. “That’s when I retreated.”
Right to protest: Florida Gov. DeSantis' protest law was meant to prevent riots in the wake of BLM protests. Now it's in the way of SOS Cuba demonstrations.
'All hell's breaking loose'
Crews' fired pepper balls had sent a rush of people from the street pushing their way into the YaYa's BBQ kitchen, where owner David McAtee lived and worked.
"There was a lot of people that ran in there as soon as y'all started shooting," an individual detained from YaYa's told Humphrey about 15 minutes after the shooting, according to body camera footage. "I couldn't give you a count."
Surveillance video captured McAtee pulling Machelle into the building as she was hit by projectiles. Then, it showed him reaching for a handgun at his side and firing twice out the door.
When she saw the first flash, Crews said she switched from her pepper ball gun to her service pistol and took cover behind a car.
When a second gunshot came from the door, she fired eight rounds. LMPD Officer LMPD Officer Austin Allen fired once, and National Guard members Spc. Andrew Michael Kroszkewicz and Staff Sgt. Mathew Stephan Roark fired a combined 10 rounds.
One bullet fired from a National Guard gun hit McAtee in the chest, and he died on his kitchen floor. Ballistics couldn't determine which National Guard member fired the fatal round.
In the Emergency Operations Center downtown, the shooting unfolding on the screens caught everyone by surprise, the source within the command center told The Courier Journal.
“We see them get out and next thing you know, there’s pepper balls going and people running and all hell’s breaking loose,” they said. “We sat there afterward trying to figure out what just happened.”
Poor communication, help delayed
The officers in the emergency operations center weren't alone in their confusion.
When the initial "shots fired" was transmitted over the radio, numerous LMPD officers showed up to help, body camera footage showed.
But for 45 minutes after the shooting, body camera footage shows officers were confused about the location of the incident, whether the building had been cleared, whether anyone had been given medical attention and whether more crowd control was needed nearby.
Friends of McAtee, who police ordered to get on the ground and crawl out the front door of YaYa's at 12:20 a.m., begged officers to go in and help McAtee. He was bleeding on the floor.
"Hold, we got SWAT on scene, let them take it," detective Brad Woolridge said, and yelled for another officer to radio for SWAT.
New study: Police officers speak to Black drivers less respectfully, study finds. Here's why it matters
Another officer nearby said, "they're saying there's a guy who shot in there."
"SWAT's gotta clear it, we're not touching it," he said again.
Then the pleas began.
"He's dying in there," one woman said repeatedly from the ground with her hands up.
“Nobody’s going to hurt nobody in there, I promise you. Sir, he’s dying. No one’s gonna hurt nobody."
"Trust me man, they don’t have anything in there," the man said.
“Help him out man, please help him out."
“They’re going to go in, right now. Lay down on your stomach and put your hands down. Nobody move," Woolridge said.
The first of two 911 calls from Marvin McAtee, David's nephew, indicated his uncle was still alive after he was shot. But MetroSafe dispatchers were confused because Marvin didn't know YaYa's exact address and kept telling them police were already there.
According to body camera footage, the first officers went into YaYa's at about 12:24, seven minutes after he was shot.
First, the SWAT team asked Machelle to step out, and asked if Marvin if he was shot.
"I'm the one that called y'all," he kept telling officers as they zip-tied his hands and escorted him outside.
Footage from LMPD Officer Aaron Browning shows he was the only officer who went to help McAtee as he and SWAT entered the kitchen. He found no pulse.
Lt. Joel Casse held back paramedics from going into the building because he thought LMPD hadn't entered yet, according to body camera footage. He sent paramedics in at 12:30, roughly 13 minutes and 46 seconds after McAtee fired the first shot.
Body camera failure
At least seven officers at the scene indicated to others they were turning off their body cameras, while others were seen on camera saying they did not have theirs on or with them.
None of the officers involved in the initial crowd dispersal or shooting had their cameras turned on, which Mayor Greg Fischer called an "institutional failure."
Hours after McAtee was killed, Fischer fired longtime LMPD Chief Steve Conrad over the lack of body cameras.
"Every single person that goes down there in the initial aggression magically has their (camera) turned off or not working," said Steve Romines, who is representing the McAtee family in a civil lawsuit against the city. "It's impossible for that to be a coincidence."
Firing pepper balls 'indiscriminately'
In May, Jefferson Commonwealth Attorney Thomas B. Wine announced he would not prosecute the two Guard members or LMPD officers for firing weapons that night.
He said Crews violated department policies, but her actions didn't rise to the level of criminality.
The Professional Standards Unit investigation into Crews' behavior — which would formally determine whether she violated any policies — is still open, according to LMPD.
There's also a pending FBI investigation.
Higgins, the policing expert, said the way LMPD and the National Guard were dispersing people indicates they weren't sufficiently trained to clear a crowd.
“They’re spread out everywhere, they’re not in any order,” he said. “They’re walking past other people and letting people walk behind them.”
Moreover, there’s no identifiable crowd other than the small group under McAtee’s tent — in a private driveway, Higgins said.
“Who were they dispersing and what was the purpose for their actions?” Higgins said. “The purpose is to disperse a crowd, not to force someone into a house.”
Higgins, who assessed video footage of the incident released by LMPD last year, said Crews was moving while shooting — which was dangerous — and she was too close to the people she was firing at and at times was randomly firing.
Romines said it's likely McAtee didn't know it wasn't bullets being fired at his niece.
"You're supposed to differentiate between a pepper ball being fired at about 450 feet per second and a bullet fired at 750 feet per second in real-time?" he said. "It's not possible. It looks just like a gun, and I've said repeatedly, pull a pepper ball gun out on a cop and see how long you live."
Machelle said she thought she'd been shot with bullets.
"It happened so fast and she was aiming right at me," Machelle said. "She started a chaotic situation that was very unnecessary."
Before that night, she said, "my uncle's spot was a safe place. For (us) to have to get shot like that … it's not right.”
Follow Kala Kachmar on Twitter: @NewsQuip.