A Wyoming couple fatally shot by law enforcement in February had a gun and a realistic-looking replica — and pointed them both at officers — but there's no evidence they fired any shots in a chase initially described as a shootout, according to grand jury testimony.
A stolen revolver found with Hailey Stainbrook and Christian Alexander had one spent round, but the lead investigator said he couldn’t determine if it had been fired during the Feb. 20 incident or some time prior.
The answer came at the prompting of a juror at the end of Lancaster County Sheriff's Office Investigator Jeremy Schwarz's questioning May 27.
"I was wondering, did Hailey or Christian ever get any shots off?" Juror Number 10 asked him.
Schwarz said the Colt .38 Special revolver found in the Chevy Trailblazer — along with a Sig Sauer P226 air-soft gun — had six rounds in it, including one spent round, meaning that it had been fired.
People are also reading…
"However, we could not, during the investigation, determine if that particular round had been fired during the incident because we couldn't find any evidence of the law enforcement vehicles being struck by a round," he said.
Schwarz said he doesn't know if it was fired and missed or if it had been fired when it was stolen in Wyoming two days earlier.
Another of the jurors asked if Stainbrook at any time pointed the gun at officers, or if she just raised it up and down as she sat in the driver's seat.
A trooper's in-car camera captured her smoking a cigarette, kicking out the driver's side window and cursing at the officers, yelling that she would kill them. By then, Alexander, beside her in the passenger seat, had been shot in the head and neck. Stainbrook had been struck, too. But she refused the officers' orders to show her hands and drop the gun so they could get them to a hospital.
Instead, for roughly five minutes, she called them "f---ing pigs" and raised the gun up three times.
The last time she did, Nebraska State Patrol Sgt. Sean Velte said she pointed it at them, prompting him to fire two shots from a rifle, hitting her.
"At that point, there was no other option," Velte told the grand jury.
Velte, Trooper Mark White and Lincoln Police Officer Jesse Hilger collectively fired 37 shots at Stainbrook and Alexander, leaving them both critically wounded, shot around a half dozen times each.
Schwarz said Stainbrook, 30 of Casper, died on the operating table that day with methamphetamine, ketamine, alcohol and nicotine in her system.
Alexander, 26 of Evansville, was declared brain dead and died three days later at an Omaha hospital after his family elected to donate his organs.
It all started with an armed robbery at 8:40 a.m., when a truck driver called 911 to a motel near the airport saying a man had just pulled a gun on him in the parking lot and took off with his wallet.
The victim told police the man with the gun drove away in a white SUV he'd been in around midnight with Stainbrook, whom he'd met on Tinder. He said they had gone to McDonald's, then back to his hotel room, where they talked and had a tarot card reading until about 2.
When he woke up, he saw messages on his phone from her asking for money. Then, when he went to start his truck, he was confronted by the man with a handgun, who turned out to be Alexander.
About a half an hour later, while he was still with police, the victim started getting notices about his credit card being used.
First at the Walmart on North 27th Street. Then, the Casey's at 56th and Superior streets.
That's where Velte spotted the Trailblazer and pulled in behind it. Stainbrook, in the driver's seat, took off, backing into another car, Alexander beside her.
Then the chase started. First, west on Superior through a red light at 27th Street, then north at the 14th Street roundabout to the Alvo Road roundabout, where a trooper tried to get the SUV to spin out and stop.
But Stainbrook kept driving. East on Alvo Road, then east on Arbor Road to 56th Street, where she turned north.Â
Velte and White tried another tactical intervention, sandwiching the SUV between their cruisers. In the process, Velte's shoulder was torn up from the impact.
White, who was on the driver's side, saw the passenger holding up a black Sig Sauer, which turned out to be the replica, and backed off thinking it was real.
"When I saw the handgun, I was like 's---.' And that's the best way to describe it," he told the grand jury.Â
Velte saw it, too. And, in response, drew his firearm and fired 11 rounds through his front windshield as he was driving.
When White heard Velte call out "shots fired," he assumed they were shooting at Velte. So did Hilger.
White pushed the driver's side rear tire of the Trailblazer, causing it to do a 180, then started hearing gunshots going off, "bam, bam, bam, bam, bam, bam, bam," he said.
At first, White thought they were shooting at him.
Then he saw Hilger, who had gotten out and fired 11 rounds toward the passenger front window. White got out and fired four. Velte another nine.
"So there's actually handguns pointed at law enforcement officers, is that correct?" Deputy Lancaster County Attorney Dan Zieg asked Schwarz, who answered yes.
When they slowed the video down to 25% speed, both of them could be seen holding their guns, pointed at Hilger.
Schwarz said things were rapidly evolving and tense.
"Is it perfectly reasonable to understand why this exhibit (the air-soft gun) was mistaken as a real firearm firing bullets?" Zieg asked.
"Absolutely," Schwarz said.
For White, the encounter was the first time he'd fired his weapon in the line of duty as a trooper.
Lancaster County Attorney Pat Condon asked if he felt, when he discharged his weapon and the other officers discharged theirs, that there was anything else he could do.
To which White, emotional, answered: "Sorry, no."
"They had already robbed an individual at gunpoint, already been involved in four or five TVIs (tactical vehicle interventions), already pointed a gun at you, pointed a gun at other officers, refused to cooperate with you, and you did what you felt you had to do, correct?" Condon said.
"Yes," White answered.
At the end of more than six hours of testimony and deliberations, the grand jury concluded that the manner of their deaths was justifiable homicide.
"The actions of Stainbrook and Alexander created an extremely dangerous and volatile situation that required multiple law enforcement agencies to respond with deadly force to protect both themselves and each other from a substantial risk of serious bodily injury or death," the grand jury said in its report.
On Wednesday, Condon said agencies involved in situations like this review them to see if there's anything they could have done differently.
"Once the gun gets flashed around, it ends up being a lethal situation," he said.