#2022-02-24

PITTSBURG — Police released audio and video depicting a man’s shooting by an officer last month at the end of an hours-long mental-health episode at a hotel.

Authorities identified the man as Ashton Porter, 45, of Alpharetta, Ga. Porter has been charged with five counts of assault upon a firefighter or police officer, one count of trespass or refusing to leave private property and one count of vandalism over $400, according to charging documents.

Police released a video Tuesday that used footage from multiple officers’ body-worn cameras. An accompanying statement acknowledged that the department’s 20-hour response meant that some officers’ cameras were not recording, due to drained batteries, as the incident ended.

The video shows various portions of the standoff, which began about 12:30 p.m. Feb. 23. Officers responded to the Hampton Inn Suites, 1201 California Ave., after dispatchers began receiving calls about sounds of yelling, smashed items and breaking window glass from a man on the inn’s fourth floor.

“We have a guest that is basically not opening his door and at the same time you can clearly hear that there’s glass that’s being broken and he’s also screaming and placing something in front of the door,” an employee told a dispatcher. The worker added that the guest was screaming for help and that family members were present but that police presence was needed.

An officer who soon arrived spoke with family members and learned that the man was having a mental-health issue and had barricaded himself inside the room with furniture and broken a room window.

After the man declined police requests through the room door to speak with them or exit the room, claiming that he was fine and “just needed time,” officers reached out to the department’s crisis-intervention team and the county’s mental-health evaluation team and mobile crisis-response teams for help.

Members of both teams joined other family members in speaking to the man, who continued to deny needing help and refusing to explain his status.

Around 9 p.m., after hearing the man say he wanted to “end it all” and learning the man had a knife, police used a truck with a boom arm extended up to the hotel’s fourth floor to place a plywood sheet over the room’s broken window. At the same time, members of the department’s tactical team arrived to assist officers.

Both county teams left the hotel shorty after midnight after the man’s continued refusal to come out. Remaining officers tried to talk to him through the door until around 6:40 a.m., when he managed to stick a knife through a damaged hole in the door toward a tactical-team officer.

“If at any point in time you want to listen to what I’ve been trying to tell you, we’re going to make sure you come out and everything’s safe and I can make you a lot more comfortable,” an officer told the man in part. “But the longer you don’t listen to me, the worse it’s going to get for you. I’ve been nothing but honest with you.”

“I know,” the man said. “But I don’t feel safe.” The officer answers: “The only safety you’ve got is listening to me.”

Soon after, officers began using rounds of chemical irritants and kept talking to try to get the man to come out of the room. Shortly after 8:10 a.m., he relented and came out, holding a butcher-style knife in his hand.

After two officers in the hallway struck the man with less-lethal sponge projectiles to no effect, he turned toward officers at one end of the hallway with the knife raised over his head. At that point, an officer used his service weapon to shoot the man, hitting him twice and knocking the knife to the floor.

Paramedics staged at the scene joined officers in providing medical care before taking him to a hospital for treatment of non-life-threatening injuries.