SAN ANTONIO – Within two days of an officer’s death, San Antonio police contradicted the chief’s own statement about how the shooting happened.
KSAT Investigates found that it’s part of a pattern of Chief William McManus giving information at police shooting scenes that have conflicted with what actually happened.
Officer William Kasberg died Tuesday after shooting himself, according to SAPD. Chief McManus said he was outside a Southwest Side school to go to state-mandated training.
“It appears right now that it was an accident,” McManus said about an hour after the Tuesday shooting.
Multiple sources told KSAT that day that the scene indicated the self-inflicted wound was intentional.
Still, McManus doubled down on the claim that the shooting was accidental while addressing the media.
“I don’t want anyone to report that it was a suicide,” McManus also said on Tuesday. “Cause we don’t know that. We don’t believe that right now.”
Two days later, San Antonio police had to change that belief.
The department said the Bexar County Medical Examiner’s Office ruled Kasberg’s death as a suicide.
The Rockport Police Department said Kasberg was under investigation for an invasive recording case of a teenager from a November incident at a motel.
The chief told KSAT detectives talked with Kasberg the day before he took his own life.
Pattern of conflicting statements by SAPD at police shooting scenes
KSAT Investigates found that this shooting is at least the fifth shooting by a San Antonio police officer — either on or off-duty — where SAPD has given information that was later refuted.
KSAT asked SAPD for an interview with the chief on Friday, but they refused to make him available.
“SAPD provides information that we know at the time with the caveat that the information is subject to change,” SAPD Captain Michelle Ramos wrote in an email on Friday afternoon.
Now-former San Antonio police officer Dezi Rios, who was involved in a 2018 shootout outside a San Antonio strip club was involved in another road rage incident.
KSAT Investigates found the body camera video conflicted with the police report.
Previously, San Antonio police dash camera video obtained by KSAT Investigates contradicted the department’s long-held narrative that a woman shot and killed by an SAPD sergeant in early 2019 had pointed a weapon at him before she was shot.
The account of the March 2019 shooting of Hannah Westall in the parking lot of a North Side shopping center is the third time since October 2018 that information provided by Chief William McManus about a fatal shooting involving his officers was later refuted by video or had to be corrected by McManus himself.
“Approached the woman, gave her some commands. She very slowly turned around, pulled the gun, and pointed it at the sergeant,” said McManus while briefing the media in the parking lot of the Huebner Commons on March 20, 2019.
Dash camera video of the shooting, however, shows Westall repeatedly being shot and the weapon falling behind her without it ever pointing at the officer.
In October 2018, after an SAPD officer shot and killed someone inside a home in the 200 block of Roberts Street, McManus said the person killed was armed and a threat to the officer.
“The officer saw a weapon in one of the individuals’ waistbands and at some point thereafter, the officer ended up using deadly force on that individual,” McManus said at the scene.
The person killed, however, turned out to be unarmed 18-year-old Charles Roundtree Jr., who was sitting on a couch.
McManus, in a follow-up interview with KSAT at the time said he was “purposely vague because we didn’t have all the facts,” before providing a correction that the person armed with a gun was shot by an officer, but that the bullet traveled through him and struck Roundtree, killing him.
The man who was armed, Davante Snowden, was charged with being a felon in possession of a firearm but was acquitted at trial last summer.
In July 2019, a grand jury declined to indict the officer who shot and killed Roundtree.
READ MORE: Video of officer-involved shooting appears to contradict San Antonio police chief’s initial claims
In January 2020, after an SAPD officer and federal law enforcement agent shot and killed Randy Goodale while he sat in a truck outside a home in the 4400 block of Stetson View, McManus said the officers opened fire after Goodale “started ramming into occupied police vehicles.”
Home surveillance video obtained by KSAT Investigates, however, shows that Goodale’s vehicle didn’t move until after he was fired upon.
When asked by a reporter at the scene why police officers opened fire, McManus doubled down: “Well, he was ramming the cars, for one. And there were officers in the vehicles whose lives were being threatened by that.”
The footage, however, showed that Goodale’s truck remained in a driveway and only after officers finished shooting did it slowly move down the driveway and bump into one of the parked, unmarked police vehicles.
That vehicle appeared to be unoccupied.
The in-custody death report submitted to the state attorney general’s office after Goodale’s death included an updated narrative that the truck did not move until after the shooting had taken place.
“Two law enforcement officers fired their service weapons at the subject as he prepared to drive at the officers near the front of the stolen truck.”
An SAPD spokesperson at the time released the following statement about the chief’s comments:
“Chief McManus provided information at the scene as the investigation was just underway. As always, this is preliminary information and subject to change as the investigation unfolds. Surveillance videos are important, however, they don’t always provide the full scope of an officer’s perception. For example, there is no audio in the video you obtained so you cannot hear what the officers are experiencing. In addition, you cannot see what the suspect is doing so you do not know what the officers are perceiving.”
Ondrej, who is now raising Westall’s young daughter, said her daughter’s death and what has taken place since is an indication that outside agencies should handle the investigation when an SAPD officer shoots and kills someone.
“I would beg him to not ever do that to a family again. It was horrendous pain,” said Ondrej, when asked if she had a message for McManus, at that time. “Please just wait for the facts before you say that because there’s (sic) families out there that are holding onto every word.”
More than three weeks after KSAT Investigates repeatedly reached out to the department’s public information office to interview McManus and just hours before the story was scheduled to air on television, the chief released the following written statement:
“When I give information at a scene it is preliminary and subject to change as the incident is investigated,” McManus said in the statement. “I always make that point very clear to the media. In this case what I was told at the scene is that the woman turned and pointed a gun at the Officer. The investigation, including review of video, confirms that she was reaching to pull out a gun she had visibly demonstrated to have in her possession. This was a terribly unfortunate incident. The officer’s actions were reviewed independently by the Bexar County District Attorney’s Office and determined to be justified.”
Read more reporting on the KSAT Investigates page.