2nd fatal shooting in year for Bellevue police officer

The Bellevue police officer who shot and killed a 24-year-old man after a domestic-violence call yesterday is one of two officers involved in the fatal shooting of a robbery suspect last year at a Nordstrom cafe.

Officer Mike Hetle shot the man in the chest yesterday after a confrontation in an apartment-complex parking lot. The man, whose identity was not released last night, died a short time later at Overlake Hospital Medical Center in Bellevue. An autopsy is scheduled for this morning.

Hetle, 33, has been placed on administrative leave pending a mandatory police investigation into the shooting.

Hetle was one of two officers who shot and killed suspected bank robber Airen Lee Weaver, 23, at the Nordstrom Grill cafe at Bellevue Square last September. That shooting was ruled justified by an internal investigation and a civilian inquest jury.

Yesterday's fatal shooting was only the third involving officers in the 47-year-history of the Bellevue Police Department. "Obviously, he's surrounded in controversy, but we're dealing with this incident first, and not our image," said police spokeswoman Marcia Harnden. "We're treating what happened at Nordstrom's as a completely separate incident."

Yesterday's shooting occurred at The Palisades apartments in the 13600 block of Northeast 12th Street.

According to Harnden, police received a 911 call at 1:04 p.m. from a frantic 26-year-old woman who told the dispatcher in Spanish that a man was threatening her with a knife.

As officers were driving to the scene, the woman — still on the phone with the police dispatcher — said the man had suddenly left the second-floor apartment and was in his blue Chevrolet Corsica.

Hetle, who by then had driven into the apartment complex, activated his emergency lights and tried to turn his police car sideways to block the man's car from leaving, Harnden said. The two cars collided head-on, she said.

Some aspects of the preliminary police account of the shooting differ from those of some residents of the complex.

According to Harnden, Hetle ordered the man in Spanish and English to get out of the car and put his hands in the air. Hetle confronted him while he was in or near the car, she said, and the man made some kind of threatening gesture.

Harden last night said it was unclear how many shots Hetle fired.

"He perceived some kind of threat to his safety," Harnden said. "As to what the exact details were ... the only person who knows what happened is (Hetle); we won't know until we get a chance to talk to him."

Several other officers arrived after the shooting. Together, they dragged the man from the car, handcuffed him and then called paramedics, who arrived a few minutes later, and began administering first aid, Harnden said.

Hetle was not injured, Harnden said.

Police last night had not recovered a weapon at the scene. Officers were awaiting a search warrant to conduct a thorough examination of the man's car.

The woman who made the 911 call was not injured.

Police didn't know how the man got back into the car after he was shot, Harnden said. She said he may have fallen back into the car.

However, Ernesto Cristobal, who said he saw the shooting from his second-floor balcony, was among several residents who said they never saw the man get out of the car before being shot by the officer.

Carrie Garzon, 19, said that after the officer yelled, "Get out of the car," the man opened the door and put his foot out. When he saw several other patrol cars coming, she said, he put his foot back in the car and shut the door.

"He looked like he was confused, like he didn't understand," she said.

Garzon and several other residents said that they only heard Hetle speaking in English.

Seconds later, Garzon said she heard two shots.

According to departmental policy, Hetle has 72 hours to confer with a lawyer and a police guild representative about the shooting. He is expected to be interviewed soon afterward by police and then go through a series of internal investigations and hearings. He went through the same process after the Weaver shooting.

"It's not because he has done something wrong, it's because it's what we always do," Harnden said. "It's a very difficult situation for any of us to go through even once. Obviously, we're concerned for him."

In the past few years, police have responded to several domestic-violence calls from the same apartment, Harnden said. Neighbors said the man and the woman were both from Guatemala. Harnden confirmed the two were "blood relatives," not married.

Police were not sure last night whether the man lived in the apartment.

In the Nordstrom shooting, Weaver, armed with a 9 mm pistol, fled into a hallway after being confronted by police and fired two shots at Hetle and Officer Dwight Hunter. The officers fired 11 rounds in five seconds, killing Weaver, who was suspected of robbing a nearby bank branch a short time earlier.

Hetle and Hunter upset some officers when they "respectfully declined" their police-medal awards at the department's annual awards banquet in May.

Harnden said the two thought they deserved the highest line-of-duty award, the medal of valor, for the Nordstrom shooting. The police medal ranks second among the five line-of-duty awards.

Since he joined the force in October 1994, Hetle's reputation as a police officer has been nothing but "very professional," Harnden said.