The Nevada man who was shot by narcotics investigators Monday afternoon amid a confrontation in a west Lincoln parking lot had fired a gun toward police before they returned fire, wounding him, authorities alleged.
The man, identified Tuesday as 35-year-old Chace Abney, was taken by ambulance to a local hospital with life-threatening injuries after investigators with the Nebraska State Patrol and Lincoln Police Department shot him at about 2:45 p.m. Monday in a parking lot near Northwest 27th and West O streets, according to authorities.
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Abney remained in critical condition as of Tuesday morning, said Lancaster County Sheriff Terry Wagner, whose agency is investigating the shooting.
At least one Lincoln Police officer and one state trooper shot Abney after the 35-year-old fired one round from a 9 mm handgun toward police, Wagner said. No officers were injured in the shooting.
At a news conference at the Sheriff's Office's headquarters Tuesday morning, where Wagner appeared alongside nearly a dozen local police officials, the sheriff suggested Abney's shooting seemed justified and declined to name the officers involved while painting a clearer picture of what authorities say led up to the incident.
The investigators — both of whom work on the Lincoln-Lancaster County Narcotics Task Force, an interagency unit that also includes Lancaster County Sheriff's Office deputies and University of Nebraska-Lincoln Police officers — had been conducting surveillance at the Super 8 motel at 2635 W. O St., Wagner said.
The investigators were not looking into Abney, but Wagner said the 35-year-old followed the officers in his Chevrolet Malibu across O Street to a parking lot at 123 N.W. 28th St.
Wagner said the investigators, wearing police vests or badges over plainclothes, confronted Abney and shouted repeated commands — though it's unclear how many commands — to exit the sedan.
Instead, Wagner alleged, Abney pointed a handgun at police and fired one round. Wagner said he wasn't sure if Abney was inside or outside the car when the shooting transpired.
The investigators returned fire, striking the 35-year-old more than once, the sheriff said. Wagner declined to say how many times Abney was shot.
"From preliminary information — it appears that (the officers) were justified in their actions," Wagner said.
Wagner said it remains unclear why Abney followed police from the hotel, where he had been a guest but was not staying in the room police were surveilling.
"I'd be guessing if I told you," he said.
Investigators haven't found the projectile Abney is accused of firing toward police, but Wagner said they did recover a shell casing from his 9 mm, which was reported stolen Monday in Norfolk, the sheriff said.
The involved officers immediately rendered first aid to Abney before Lincoln Fire and Rescue crews responded and took him by ambulance to Bryan West Campus.
Abney had most recently been living in New York and had outstanding warrants in New York, Arizona and California, Wagner said. He had ties to Lincoln and had been here for about a week prior to Monday for a family function, the sheriff said.
Members of the Lincoln-Lancaster County Narcotics Task Force generally drive unmarked cruisers and wear plainclothes as they investigate drug and weapons crimes. Task force investigators don't wear body cameras.
The task force is made up of 35 investigators, including 11 investigators and four sergeants from the Lincoln Police Department, . Capt. Ryan Dale of LPD leads the unit.
Wagner said none of the involved investigators — including the two who fired and a third who was on scene but did not shoot at Abney — were wearing body worn cameras. He also said there was not dashcam footage of the incident.
Both investigators have been placed on paid administrative leave in accordance with each agency’s policy.
The sheriff deferred to the State Patrol and Lincoln Police Department to individually identify the officers who shot Abney.
Col. John Bolduc, who leads the Nebraska State Patrol, definitively declined to do so.
"We do not release the names of officers involved in officer-involved shootings," he said at Tuesday's news conference. "We never have. And that policy is not likely to change any time soon."
In fact, a State Patrol spokesman said, it would be a violation of , which only allows Bolduc to disclose information on internal investigations to the Legislature, the state's crime commission, the Nebraska Police Standards Advisory Council, the Equal Opportunity Commission or a complainant involved in an investigation.
And Lincoln Police Chief Teresa Ewins also declined to identify the police officer involved in Monday's shooting, though she said the department would assess whether the officer or their family would be at risk of harm before making a final decision on the matter.
"So we have to be very careful how we go through this process," she said, later adding: "It's gonna be up to — to really me looking at the assessment, looking at the threat against the officers that could be posed. It may go to a grand jury. And so, we can't give you information until we understand where it's gonna be going."
If Abney dies of his injuries, Nebraska state law requires a grand jury to investigate his death. The law doesn't call for a grand jury to be convened for nonfatal police shootings.
Other law enforcement agencies in the state have been more transparent than the State Patrol or Lincoln Police Department in such nonfatal shootings.
The Antelope County Attorney  in a nonfatal incident.
And in Omaha, police officials have repeatedly identified officers involved in nonfatal shootings, doing so at least three times in the last two years, including in November 2022, and .
An after he was involved in two fatal shootings in six years publicly .
Wagner, who acknowledged the officers' names may never be made public if Abney survives the shooting, said he was withholding their identities to remain in line with the other involved agencies' policies.
"I'm gonna abide by their policy on this," he said. "They can make the decision, if and when they want to release their officers' names."
Ewins declined to say how experienced the officers were, but they must have at least three years of experience to apply for a position on the specialized task force, which Ewins lauded Tuesday in the aftermath of the shooting.
"They go out there all the time, the task force, and they risk their lives every single day," she said. "And they do a great job. And this just another example of the great job that they did.
"You know, when people — drugs are one of those things that we just don't know what people's behavior will be. And so, understand that — it's hard to understand why someone would go after the police officers. But it doesn't make sense. Drugs don't make sense."
Investigators found methamphetamine and marijuana in Abney's car after police confronted and shot him, Wagner said. Authorities do not know if he was under the influence of drugs at the time of the shooting.
In the minutes after the shooting, several police officers — some wearing plainclothes and others armed with long guns — converged on the Super 8 motel a block east of the shooting scene and took one man into custody.
His arrest was unrelated to the shooting, authorities said.
In his remarks Tuesday, Wagner noted the parallels between Monday's shooting and the most recent police shooting in Lincoln before Monday, which transpired in November 2021, when a State Patrol trooper working for the same task force shotÌý²¹²Ô»åÌýkilled a 27-year-old man near 19th and G streets in Lincoln.
"You might remember that, I think, the last officer-involved shooting we had in Lincoln was the same scenario," he said. "Task force officers from the narcotics task force."
In that instance, a plainclothes State Patrol investigator, Adam Strode, shot and killed German Pedraza at an apartment near 19th and G streets as the Columbus man reached for a handgun, according to authorities. A grand jury later cleared Strode of any wrongdoing in the shooting.
Neither Pedraza nor Abney had been sought by investigators on the day of their shooting, only crossing paths with task force investigators by happenstance.
Police maintain Pedraza had been the subject of an ongoing narcotics investigation at the time of his death, but investigators were not seeking him the day they contacted him at 19th and G streets, according to investigators' own testimony.
Wagner, who brought up the previous shooting to highlight "the work (task force investigators) do is dangerous," dismissed the notion that the parallels between the two shootings might be cause for concern.
"Not to me," he said.