Tigard, commissioners decline to review Lukus Glenn shooting

Attorneys for Lukus Glenn’s family are still seeking a

By Barbara Sherman

The Times, Oct 26, 2006, Updated Oct 30, 2009

Jaime Valdez / The Times

CALL FOR INQUEST - Brad Glenn (left) comforts his wife Hope during an Oct. 19 press conference in which attorney Larry Peterson calls for a public inquest into the shooting death of their son Luke.

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Despite a plea for a public inquest into the fatal shooting of 18-year-old Lukus Glenn by Washington County sheriff’s deputies Sept. 16, the Washington County Board of Commissioners has declined to investigate the case, and the Tigard City Council has chosen to make no response.

Two deputies and a Tigard police officer responded to a 9-1-1 call from the Metzger home of Brad and Hope Glenn early that morning concerning their agitated and drunken son who was holding a knife and destroying property.

The officers repeatedly demanded that Luke drop the knife before the Tigard officer, Andrew Pastore, fired six rounds of beanbags at him.

According to Glenn family attorneys Larry Peterson and Michael Cox, the 9-1-1 tape recording of the incident reveals that sheriff’s deputies Mikhail Gerba and Timothy Mateski began firing the first of 11 shots at Luke as the sixth bean bag round went off.

Washington County Chief Deputy District Attorney Robert Bletko, who conducted an investigation of the incident, determined that the shooting was legally justified.

However, Peterson and Cox speculated in an Oct. 19 press conference that the beanbag rounds forced Luke to turn and run toward his family and the house, which the deputies used as justification to shoot him. They also asserted that Gerba’s statements about the incident are not consistent with the tape recording.

On Oct. 5, Peterson and Cox sent letters to Tigard Mayor Craig Dirksen and the Washington County Board of Commissioners requesting that they hold a public inquest into the shooting that would be “transparent and open to the public.”

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