ARLINGTON – Two Snohomish County Sheriff’s deputies will not face criminal charges in the shooting of an Arlington man last summer.
In a letter to the two detectives leading the investigation, Snohomish County Prosecuting Attorney Mark Roe wrote that deputies “did everything they could to diffuse the situation” during during a standoff with 64-year-old Dwight Monnie on July 2, 2009.
Monnie was shot and killed by deputies after allegedly pointing a handgun and threatening them.
“These are the type of situations police officers must sometimes face in carrying out their duty to protect all of us,” Roe wrote in the June 24 letter to the detectives. “While they never want to take a life, on this occasion, they had no safe or prudent option. Mr. Monnie was a very real threat to the Deputies and everyone else present.”
Monnie died six days later at Harborview Medical Center in Seattle.
Deputies responded to a rural home in Arlington Heights last summer to a 911 call stating that Monnie was armed with a handgun and had threatened his wife. According to Roe’s letter, Monnie was pursuing her with the gun, and had threatened to shoot himself after shooting his wife.
Deputies, laid shields and other protective gear on their patrol car, and slowly made their way down the approximately 200-yard long driveway. They found Monnie on the porch with the handgun.
Monnie ordered the deputies to shut off their lights and yelled “no cooperation, no peace.”
Deputies repeatedly told Monnie to drop his gun, and several minutes later Monnie gave deputies their “last warning,” according to the letter.
Two of the five deputies – one who had taken a covering position behind a tree and another among a group of four deputies taking cover behind or near the car – shot Monnie with their rifles. Ballistics tests were unable to determine which deputy fired first.
A number of witnesses corroborated the events of the altercation, and said that the deputies had no option but to shoot Monnie.
The detectives spearheading the Snohomish County Multiple Agency Response Team investigation were from the Bothell and Everett police departments.
