Daniel Shaver was 26 and working in Mesa, Arizona, on the evening of January 18, 2016, when hotel staff called police after someone reported a rifle being pointed from his fifth-floor La Quinta Inn & Suites window. Shaver, a pest control specialist from Granbury, Texas, had been showing two acquaintances the scoped pellet rifles he used for exterminating birds while they were in his room.

Officers ordered Shaver and a female acquaintance into the hallway. Body camera footage shows Shaver on his knees, crying and pleading not to be shot, and an officer — later identified as Philip Mitch Brailsford — giving commands. As Shaver crawled forward he made a motion with his right hand toward his waistband; Brailsford, armed with an AR-15, fired five times, killing Shaver. Shaver was unarmed; two pellet rifles used for his job were later recovered in the room and the autopsy confirmed five gunshot wounds.

Brailsford was fired and charged with second-degree murder and a lesser reckless manslaughter count. His trial concluded in December 2017 with a not guilty verdict. Civil suits by Shaver’s widow and parents were later settled.