Before Manuel Longoria was fatally shot in the back by Pinal County Sheriff’s deputy, the 40-year-old man held a rosary in his hands.

He had surrendered and raised his empty hands in the air when Deputy Heath Rankin fired two bullets from his AR-15 rifle. 

Rankin said he shot because he believed Longoria had a gun and attempted to get into a shooter’s stance.

The shooting happened on Jan. 14, 2014, in Eloy.

Eloy is a Hispanic-majority town of 18,000 people about 60 miles south of Phoenix and 50 miles north of Tucson. 

Six years later, after a winding route through the legal system, a civil trial in the wrongful-death lawsuit against Rankin opened in a U.S. District Court in Phoenix.

A witness recorded the deadly encounter on a cellphone, showing Longoria being struck with beanbag rounds and a Taser by Eloy police officers before Rankin fired.

“He shouldn’t have been shot,” Roger Clark, a retired Los Angeles County Sheriff’s Department sergeant and expert witness, testified on Wednesday.

Rankin has previously said he thought Longoria had a gun and had threatened the deputy earlier in the confrontation.

His lawyers have said in court documents Rankin was justified in the shooting and was protecting himself and others because Longoria posed a deadly threat.

The trial, which began Monday, is expected to last up to 12 days. It comes after a summer filled with mass protests in Phoenix and across the country against police violence and systemic racism in the criminal justice system.

The civil unrest in Phoenix was prompted by the deaths of George Floyd in Minneapolis and local cases of Dion Johnson, Muhammad Muyhuymin and Ryan Whitaker, among others.

This lawsuit is a civil case. The officer will not face any criminal punishment if the jury finds he used excessive force.

The case is a rare instance in which a law enforcement officer has to publicly explain why he or she decided to shoot someone. Rankin was expected to testify.

Longoria’s family is seeking an unspecified amount of damages.

An Arizona Republic analysis shows prosecutors across the state clear nearly every police shooting they review for criminal charges, including Heath’s case. In nearly 700 police shootings in the state since 2011, two officers have been charged with a crime. 

Longoria’s death is one of two police shooting cases the state Attorney General’s Office had reviewed since 2011. Rankin, who still works as a deputy for the Pinal County Sheriff’s Office, was cleared of any criminal charges by the state Attorney General Tom Horne in June 2014. 

The other one is the shooting of Edward Brown, who was paralyzed when Phoenix police officer Kenneth Silva shot Brown in the back as he ran away in August 2018. In May 2019, the Attorney General’s Office reported it had reviewed the case and Silva did not commit any act that warranted criminal prosecution.

Longoria’s case was investigated by the Sheriff’s Office and sent to the Attorney General’s Office because the Pinal County Attorney’s Office had a conflict of interest in reviewing the shooting.

After Rankin was cleared, Joel Robbins, an attorney, filed the lawsuit against Rankin on behalf of Longoria’s children.

Robbins and Jesse Showalter, another attorney representing Longoria’s family, didn’t respond to a request for comment.

Christina Gail Retts and Kathleen L. Wieneke, the attorneys representing Rankin, also didn’t respond to a request for comment.

Judge: Video contradicts officer’s account

The lawsuit was filed in January 2015 but was dismissed by U.S. District Court Judge Susan R. Bolton, saying “no reasonable jury could conclude that Defendant Rankin’s use of force was unconstitutionally excessive or not justified under Arizona law,” she wrote in her order in March 2016.

Robbins appealed to the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals, which overturned Bolton’s ruling in October 2017. 

“No other officers saw Longoria assume a ‘shooters stance’ and responded accordingly,” Judge Stephen Reinhardt wrote in the appeals court ruling.

He also said two videos depicting the shooting contradict what Rankin had told investigators at the time.

“The videos depict Longoria flailing his arms and moving erratically before turning around and raising his empty hands above his head in the several seconds before Rankin shoots and kills him,” the judge wrote.

“These videos provide some of the most important evidence as to what occurred before and during the shooting and what Rankin actually saw.”

Pinal County attorneys had asked the U.S. Supreme Court to hear their appeal, but the court denied their request.

Bolton is now presiding over the case again.

A 70-minute chase, then confrontation

In testimony Wednesday, Clark, who was hired by Robbins to testify in the case, said Longoria did not pose a deadly threat to anyone and Rankin shouldn’t have shot. He also testified that the Eloy police officers had contained the situation.

The incident started when Longoria, who was distraught over his relationship with the mother of his three children, stole his brother-in-law’s car and drove around Eloy, according to court records.

Eloy officers tried to pull him over for a traffic violation but Longoria led them on a 70-minute chase. Eloy officers asked Pinal County deputies to be on standby in case Longoria left the town.

At one point, Longoria got out of the vehicle, and he was seen holding and kissing a dark-colored rosary, court documents say. At another point, officers saw Longoria holding a wallet. Officer James Salazar shouted to his colleagues that Longoria was holding a wallet and not a gun, court documents say. This message was also dispatched through a radio frequency, court documents say.

Rankin has claimed he did not hear that message being broadcast on the radio channel, which he also was monitoring, court documents say.

As Longoria drove through town, he threw money out the car window, yelling that he wanted to die.

“While driving, he waved his hand out of the car, sometimes making a gun with his fingers and pointing his fingers at his head as though gesturing for officers to shoot him,” court documents say.

The car Longoria was driving finally came to a stop after an officer struck it.

Longoria got out of the vehicle, facing the officers, with one hand behind his back and another in the air, video footage shows. Officer Eustino Tarango yelled “less lethal” at least twice, so his colleagues could use a Taser or beanbag gun on Longoria, according to his testimony on Wednesday.

When Longoria was hit with the Taser, he flinched, turned toward his car with his empty hands in the air.

Rankin shot him twice, killing Longoria. Police later found the rosary nearby.

The trial is scheduled to continue Thursday.

Uriel Garcia covers public-safety issues in Arizona. Reach him at [email protected]. Follow him on Twitter @ujohnnyg.

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