Daniel Shaver

Daniel Leetin Shaver (December 29, 1989January 18, 2016) grew up in Nashville, Tennessee, and graduated from Hillwood High School in 2007.

He lived in Granbury, Texas, with his wife and two daughters.

Shaver was employed as a pest control specialist, and was visiting Mesa for a business trip when he was killed.

He was 26 years old.

Philip Mitchell Brailsford, like Daniel Shaver, was 26 years old at the time of the shooting.

Brailsford graduated from Mesa Desert Ridge High School in 2009 and had signed up with the Arizona National Guard before being hired by Mesa Police.

According to a police report, Shaver had been staying at a Mesa La Quinta Inn & Suites on business.

He invited two acquaintances, Monique Portillo and Luis Nuñez, to his room for drinks.

There he showed them a scoped air rifle he was using to exterminate birds inside grocery stores.

At one point, the gun was pointed outside his fifth-floor window, prompting a witness to notify the hotel receptionist.

Following this, the police were immediately called by an employee at the hotel.

Nuñez left the hotel room shortly before six police officers arrived at about 9:20 p.m. The officers, led by Sergeant Charles Langley, stood in the corridor outside Shaver's hotel room and called out to the occupants to exit the room, but received no response.

Portillo later testified that she and Shaver did not hear these initial commands.

Police then telephoned Shaver's room and again ordered the occupants to step outside.

Shaver and Portillo then walked into the hotel corridor, where Langley gave them orders for several minutes while the other officers, including Philip Brailsford, trained rifles on them.

Portillo was taken into custody unharmed.

Langley then ordered Shaver, who was lying prone at Langley's request, to cross his legs.

Moments later, he ordered Shaver to push himself "up to a kneeling position".

While complying with the order to kneel, Shaver uncrossed his legs and Langley shouted that Shaver needed to keep his legs crossed.

Startled, Shaver then put his hands behind his back and was again warned by Langley to keep his hands in the air.

Langley yelled at Shaver that if he deviated from police instructions again, they would shoot him.

Sergeant Langley told Shaver not to put his hands down for any reason.

Shaver said, "Please don't shoot me".

Upon being instructed to crawl, Shaver put his hands down and crawled on all fours.

While crawling towards the officers, Shaver moved his right hand towards his waistband.

Brailsford, who later testified he believed that Shaver was reaching for a weapon, then opened fire with his AR-15 rifle, striking Shaver five times and killing him almost instantly.

Shaver was unarmed and may have been attempting to prevent his shorts from slipping down.

An autopsy report found that Shaver was intoxicated, which police stated may have contributed to his confused response to their commands.

Shaver's widow requested that the Mesa Police Department release bodycam footage of the event.

The request for the bodycam footage was initially refused.

In a recording released by Shaver's widow, purportedly of a meeting between her and Maricopa County prosecutors, she was told that she could watch the video only if she agreed not to discuss its contents with the press.

Prosecutors and defense attorneys in Brailsford's murder trial asked that the bodycam footage be sealed.

Maricopa County Superior Court Judge Sam Myers granted the motion to seal the footage.

He had been employed with the Mesa Police Department since 2013.

He was "administratively cleared" of wrongdoing in a 2015 incident involving excessive use of force during an arrest of three unarmed teenage suspects.

Brailsford's father was a police sergeant who had also worked for the Mesa Police Department.

On January 18, 2016, Daniel Leetin Shaver of Granbury, Texas, was fatally shot by police officer Philip Brailsford in the hallway of a La Quinta Inn & Suites hotel in Mesa, Arizona.

Police were responding to a report that a rifle had been pointed out of the window of Shaver's hotel room.

After the shooting, the rifle (previously assumed to be a lethal weapon), which remained in the room, was determined to be a pellet gun.

Following an investigation, Brailsford was charged with second-degree murder and a lesser manslaughter charge and later found not guilty by a jury.