Cops opened fire on suicidal man ‘like cowboys from a John Wayne movie,’ new lawsuit claims
South Carolina deputies acted “like cowboys from a John Wayne movie” when they fired off dozens of bullets at a distraught man during a caught-on-video 2021 encounter, according to a new lawsuit.
Trevor Mullinax, 29, was struck nine times in the barrage of 50 bullets from York County deputies as he sat in his pickup truck while being consoled by his mother on May 7, 2021, with bodycam footage showing that the deputies opened fire almost immediately.
Now he’s suing the deputies for negligence and defamation.
“Let me see your hands!” one deputy is heard yelling on the video as he pulls up to Mullinex’s black pickup truck while his mother, Tammy Beason, is seen trying to console her suicidal son.
But almost immediately the deputies shower the truck with bullets, sending Beason scrambling for cover and screaming for her son.
The footage then shows Mullinax slumped behind the wheel as deputies handcuffed a weeping Beason at the scene.
“Just because they are a law enforcement, they did not give them the right to do what they did,” Beason told NBC News about the incident at a press conference this week. “And, you know, I want to be able to believe in the law enforcement and to get back my belief that they’re not going to hurt you.”
Mullinax, who survived the encounter, and his mother are now suing York County and the county’s sheriff’s office for the near-fatal confrontation with deputies, which began when a cousin called cops for a “wellness check” on Mullinex and suddenly escalated.
“There was a round that hit him smack dab in the middle of the back of his head,” Mullinax’s lawyer, Justin Bamberg, told NBC at the briefing. “Never seen anybody get shot in the back of the head who’s a threat to law enforcement or anybody else.”
The lawsuit said that Mullinax had a shotgun at the time and was contemplating using it to take his own life — but maintains he never displayed it nor threatened the deputies with it.
“Plaintiff Mullinax was lawfully in possession of a hunting shotgun during this time, and at no point did he point the weapon at himself or any other person,” the lawsuit said. In fact, the entire time plaintiff Beason was talking to her son through the driver’s side window, the shotgun was present.
“Plaintiff Mullinax never once indicated he intended to use the weapon on anyone other than himself.”
Several days before the incident, Mullinax had “issues with his girlfriend” and kicked in her door, Bamberg said, and was “just in a really dark place.”
“It led to him being charged with burglary, didn’t steal anything,” Bamberg told NBC. “It wasn’t that that charge actually, in fact, got dropped, because it was nonsense.”
The York County Sheriff’s Office said in a statement that it had not yet been served with the lawsuit and would not comment on the allegations, according to the network.
However, the office said the four deputies involved in the shooting were later “cleared of any wrongdoing” after an investigation by South Carolina state authorities.
“Mr. Mullinax chose to put these men in danger by pulling a shotgun,” Sheriff Kevin Tolson said in the statement. “These deputies responded appropriately to the threat as they were trained to do. Had Mr. Mullinax made different choices that day, deputies would not have been required to use force.”
The lawsuit was filed Friday in the York County Court.
