Richmond officers take stand, describe fatally shooting man who stood over his son, knife in hand

MARTINEZ — A 55-year-old man slashed his ex-wife’s throat and attempted to stab himself several times before Richmond officers entered the home he’d broken into and fatally shot him, according to testimony of the officers Wednesday morning.

Luc Ciel, 55, was killed after being shot by multiple Richmond officers in an April 11, 2019 incident. He had just broken into the home of his ex-wife and two children and was attacking his son when the officers opened fire.

Officers Danielle Evans, Jeffrey Tyner, and Terrance Jackson have been identified as the officers who fired on Ciel. The primary shooter, police say, was Evans, who testified she shot at Ciel several times after he began walking toward officers, knife in hand.

“I leaned around officer Tyner onto the direction of the bed and fired my duty weapon,” Evans testified at a coroner’s inquest hearing Wednesday morning. She said she heard a shot simultaneous to her’s, which turned out to be from Jackson, whom Evans said she didn’t know had arrived on scene.

“After I fired, I heard another shot and watched (Ciel0 fall to the ground,” Evans said, adding she wasn’t sure at the time where Jackson was when he shot his pistol.

Ciel, Evans testified, “had one hand on (his son’s) chest and had him pinned.” In his other hand was a knife, which Ciel raised above his head. Tyner yelled five times to “drop it” then fired two to three shots at Ciel seconds before Evans began to fire, he testified.

The officers were responding to 911 calls made by Ciel’s children, who reported Ciel broke a window and entered the home around 3 a.m. the morning of the incident. Two weeks earlier, Ciel had threatened to murder his family, and was arrested and released from jail days later, police testified.

Ciel was forbidden from being on the property due to an active restraining order for a prior domestic violence conviction, according to a Richmond homicide investigator.

Ciel’s middle school-aged son later told police that after Ciel broke into the home, he attacked their mother. The boy and his sister tried to defend their mom, but she was stabbed in the throat, stomach, hands, and suffered and unspecified head injury as well, according to Det. Jose Villalobos. The woman survived the attack.

After a struggling, Ciel turned the knife on himself, Villalobos testified Wednesday, but the blade was too dull to have any effect. He tried to stab himself with two other knives but was unsuccessful, authorities said.

“He made a statement that it was their fault he was going to die,” Villalobos said. Shortly thereafter, police arrived, and Ciel turned the knife on his son.

Ciel had a history of domestic violence that included a 2015 incident when he attacked his ex-wife. She wrote in a restraining order application that he “threatened my life and the life of my family while holding knives in both hands” and strangled her for several seconds, according to court records.

Wednesday’s testimony was part of a coroner’s inquest hearing, where a jury is asked to determine cause of death for all police shootings or other fatal law-enforcement involved incidents in Contra Costa County, including jail deaths, police chases, and any fatal use-of-force incident. The jury’s ruling has no civil nor criminal liability but stands as the official cause of death.

The inquest hearings differ from typical court hearings in several ways: police are allowed to enter hearsay testimony, witnesses are allowed to watch each other testify, the jury’s decision doesn’t have to be unanimous, and the hearing officer is allowed to ask leading questions. Members of the audience — most typically civil attorneys or family of the person killed — are also allowed to submit questions to witnesses.

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Richmond police released body camera video of the shooting last year. It is graphic: