MT. SHASTA, Calif. — The man killed in a Christmas Day shooting by a police office on board Amtrak’s Coast Starlight was disabled and suffered from mental health issues, his mother told the Redding Record Searchlight.
Nicholas Detweiler Haritoudis, 32, was a train passenger, traveling from Klamath Falls, Ore., to California’s Sonoma County, when was shot and killed by a Mt. Shasta officer early on Dec. 25, his mother, Julia Detwiler, told the newspaper. An Amtrak crew member was wounded and the police officer was also injured in the incident about 12:30 a.m. [see “One killed in Christmas morning police shooting …,” Trains News Wire, Dec. 27, 2023]. Names of those individuals have not been released.
The California Attorney General’s Office is investigating the shooting. Few details have been released; it remains unknown why the train stopped in Mt. Shasta, which is not a regular stop for the train, or what led to the shooting.
“We want it known that he was basically an ordinary person and he loved to travel,” Detwiler told the Record Searchlight. “His joy was to travel on Amtrak trains. It was a very important part of his life, and I don’t know what transpired to bring this type of force onto the train.”
https://www.heraldandnews.com/news/man-arrested-for-threats-to-kill-neighbors/article_1f5acac3-c6af-58f1-9025-8db46ca34acb.html
A little more info about the perp and his record showing a violent past. The Redding Record and Searchlight paper’s article that trains newswire ran is a biased and sensationalized piece that shows this disturbed man as an “ordinary person who likes to ride Amtrak trains…”
Rubbish!!
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Reading between the lines, the news report attempts to paint the picture of invalid unable to defend himself against a gun carrying officer.
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Mr. Boza, that’s illogical. If you are “reading inbetween the lines”, you are __SPECULATING__ as to what has happened.
That you claim a routine investigation is proof that something wrong was done goes to show you care very little about details. Anything like this is _always_ investigated.
I hope that the officer had a body cam for his sake.
Don’t know why the train stopped at Mt. Shasta? It’s quite obvious. The man was becoming so disruptive that the crew determined he needed to be removed. The SOP is for the crew to request the engineer to call for law enforcement. The engineer knows the territory better than anyone and notifies the dispatcher. The engineer will normally give the dispatcher the locality or location where the train will stop.
I’m a bit curious about the man. His mom said he liked to travel Amtrak. Did he frequent the Coast Starlite? If so it is more than likely the crew was familiar with him and his disability. A lot of info lacking here.
Well we have witnesses that have said he was acting erratically and/or talking to himself. Officer deployed less lethal (taser) first and if he was using an Use of Force Model then something happened that required deadly force. Have to wait and see how/why the officer was injured.
Victim Card 101.
The reports really do not divulge what actually happened to initiate the use of deadly force. So, what were the man’s disabilities? That could mean almost anything today. Reading between the lines, the news report attempts to paint the picture of invalid unable to defend himself against a gun carrying officer.
With the California Attorney General’s Office investigating the use of deadly force, it does not look good for the officer.
well he became an idiot whether he liked traveling
How would you know, Mike? The public doesn’t know what happened yet.