Lawsuit accuses Wichita officer of tampering with knife at fatal shooting of Marine

A lawsuit alleges that one of two Wichita police officers involved in the fatal shooting of a Marine veteran suffering from PTSD tampered with evidence at the scene – a knife.

Authorities have said that Icarus Randolph, a 26-year-old veteran who had served in Iraq, approached with a knife before an officer shot him this past July 4.

A knife was removed by another officer who was there when the shots rang out, says a lawsuit filed Tuesday by Randolph’s family.

After Officer Ryan Snyder shot Randolph, Officer Danny Brown “tampered with evidence at the scene,” the lawsuit says.

“A knife, according to Brown, was removed by him from the scene” and put in a bag in his car “before the scene was processed and evidence documented and properly secured by police officials,” says the lawsuit petition, filed in Sedgwick County District Court.

The city could not be reached for comment on the lawsuit.

The 39-page petition, which names both officers as defendants, accuses Snyder of deliberately disregarding, in various ways, a department policy on responding to people who are mentally ill or suffering from substance abuse even though he had training to handle such incidents.

The lawsuit accuses Snyder of escalating the situation at Randolph’s home in south Wichita and needlessly causing Randolph’s death; the lawsuit claims that Brown stood by and failed to intervene after first seeming to be helpful.

District Attorney Marc Bennett announced last month that he wasn’t filing any criminal charges against the officers.

The lawsuit also says that detectives arrived before the ambulance, and Randolph lay on the ground with four gunshot wounds and without medical care for 10 to 15 minutes before the ambulance got there.

The lawsuit comes a little less than a month after the family filed a notice of claim with the city seeking $5 million.

The lawsuit petition details much of the same narrative and allegations as the notice of claim did. One notable addition is the accusation that Brown tampered with evidence. According to the new details in the lawsuit petition, “Officer Brown was observed moving through the scene, as if collecting and marking evidence,” which should have been secured and processed by others.

“Sgt. Krok took charge and ordered Officer Brown to stop what he was doing and to leave the scene,” the lawsuit says.

Brown later gave a folding knife to lab technicians after he got to City Hall and right before his first interview about Randolph’s death, it says.

On June 12, Bennett, the county’s chief prosecutor, said Randolph was killed after he approached officers with a knife and after a Taser was ineffective.

“The conclusion in this case is that the police officer was placed in a situation where he objectively and reasonably felt he needed to defend himself against the advance of someone who was not responding to calls ... either from the officer or from family,” Bennett said. “He did not respond to non-lethal force when the Taser was used, and as a result of this, I find that there is no basis for criminal charges to be filed in this matter.”

This story was originally published July 1, 2015 at 12:02 PM with the headline "Lawsuit accuses Wichita officer of tampering with knife at fatal shooting of Marine."