To police, Steven
Hirschfield was violent and out of control when he
clambered aboard a patrol boat sent to rescue him in the San
Diego Bay during a gay pride party.
The 37-year-old
bodybuilder, shirtless and wearing sneakers, seized an
officer's stun gun and beat him in the face, they say,
before he was fatally shot while reaching for the
officer's weapon.
Their account has
left his grieving family in disbelief. Family members
suspect Hirschfield, whom they described as deeply artistic
and loving, was a victim of homosexual bias and a
police cover-up.
"He is not
violent. I have not seen him hit anybody in my life,"
his sister, Kristine Hirschfield, said at a news conference
Friday. "It doesn't make any sense."
The family plans
to file a federal lawsuit claiming Hirschfield's civil
rights were violated and conduct its own investigation into
his death.
"Steven
Hirschfield had everything to live for. So this myth that
you are hearing that Steven was attacking a police
officer is completely at odds with the type of person
that Steven Hirschfield was," family attorney Brian
Claypool said.
"The manner in
which this police officer handled this situation is
consistent with somebody who might hold some preconceived
notions against gay people," Claypool said.
Hirschfield was a
dancer in the Circuit Daze harbor cruise, a July 19
dance party attended by about 900 revelers as part of the
weekend's gay pride celebrations. The crew called the
Harbor Police Department just after 11 p.m., about an
hour into the cruise, to report a man overboard.
Hornblower
Cruises general manager Jim Unger said earlier this week
that Hirschfield refused to accept a flotation device
from a crew member. When a harbor patrol boat arrived,
Hirschfield initially refused to climb onto the swim
deck but then hauled himself onto the bow using a hanging
rope, said San Diego police lieutenant William
Stetson.
Once on the boat,
Hirschfield grabbed officer Wayne Schmidt's stun gun
and beat him in the face before reaching for Schmidt's
pistol, according to harbor police lieutenant John
Forsythe. Officer Clyde Williams then fatally shot
Hirschfield in the chest. Schmidt was treated for face and
leg injuries.
The San Diego
Police Department and district attorney are investigating
the shooting. A toxicology report is pending.
Claypool
questions nearly every point of the police account,
including how Hirschfield got in the water. Police say
witnesses told investigators Hirschfield jumped
voluntarily from the deck of the 222-foot yacht
Inspiration, but Claypool said he might have
slipped.
He wonders how a
violent confrontation with police could have occurred,
given that Hirschfield's body showed no bruising, only
scratches consistent with climbing aboard the boat.
Hirschfield would have been exhausted after falling 30
feet from the yacht and treading water for at least 20
minutes in the chilly harbor, Claypool said.
Paramedics were
delayed, he claimed, suggesting that police might have
been concocting a story.
He said he
planned to ask for DNA tests of the stun gun to determine
whether Hirschfield touched it.
Claypool also
said Hirschfield was shot in the back, but the San Diego
County medical examiner has listed Hirschfield's cause of
death as a gunshot wound to the chest. Investigator
Paul Parker said he could not confirm whether the
wound was an entry or exit wound because Hirschfield's
death is still an open homicide investigation.
John Gilmore, a
spokesman for the San Diego Unified Port District, which
oversees the harbor police, said the agency had "received no
new information to render our initial report
inaccurate. We are standing by that now, but it was
preliminary."
He declined to
respond directly to Claypool's accusations.
The family is
appealing for witnesses to come forward.
"We'll get to the
bottom of this," said Hirschfield's father, Alan,
standing beside his weeping wife, Nicole. (AP)