IRS agent accused of manslaughter says lack of emergency planning caused victim’s death

A federal agent who accidentally shot a colleague told a federal jury
Thursday that the victim’s death wasn’t due to the gunshot, but rather a
systemic failure in emergency response planning. 

Larry Brown, a
federal agent with the Internal Revenue Service’s criminal investigation
unit, is accused of involuntary manslaughter for accidentally shooting a
fellow agent in the torso at a federal prison shooting range in 2023.
Though Brown doesn’t deny shooting Special Agent Patrick Bauer, he says
Bauer’s death was preventable after the injury.

“What happened on
August 17, 2023 was a terrible accident. One that could have happened to
anyone in law enforcement, even those most careful with firearms,”
defense attorney Jeffrey Jacobson told a 14-person jury in his opening
statement Thursday morning. “The accident was caused by an escalating
cascade of failures that began well before August 17.”

The root of those failures was the IRS’s lack of planning, Jacobson said. 

“The
IRS had no emergency response plan in place. It was not as if the IRS
had a response plan and the plan was flawed,” he said. “They had no
plan.” 

Jacobson added that the 59 minutes it took for Bauer to be transported to the hospital contributed to Bauer’s death.

But federal prosecutor Nathaniel Walters placed the blame solely on the shoulders of the man who pulled the trigger. 

“When he pulled that trigger, the gun did exactly what it’s supposed to do,” he told the jury. “It fired.”

Walters reviewed what he referred to as the “four cardinal rules of firearm safety:”

• Always treat a gun as if it is loaded
• Point the muzzle in a safe direction
• Keep your finger off the trigger until ready to fire
• Always know what is behind your target

Walters said Brown violated the first three rules.

“For every
one of those rules that are broken, the chance of someone getting shot
and killed gets higher and higher and higher,” he said.

Three
times in his opening statement, he repeated the line an FBI agent claims
to have overheard Brown repeating to himself as he was treated for
shock in a separate hospital from Bauer: “I’m a use of force instructor.
I should know better. I teach this.”

But in his opening, Jacobson said, “Agent Brown never said those words.” 

Around
11 a.m. on August 17, 2023, Brown and Bauer had recently finished
teaching defensive tactics and firearms training at a shooting range at
the federal prison in north Phoenix. Special Agent Justin Owens, who
testified Thursday afternoon, said he was in a small cement structure on
the range known as “the tower,” from which shooting instructions can be
given on a loudspeaker, with Brown and Bauer. 

Just minutes after
Owens left the tower to go to his truck, he said Brown ran frantically
out of the tower yelling “I fucked up. I shot Pat.”

Owens said Bauer, lying on the floor of the tower and bleeding from his abdomen, said, “Larry is a fucking idiot.”

Owens
told the court that there’s no reason why Brown would have drawn his
weapon while in the tower. No security cameras recorded the event. Owens
said it likely wasn’t due to a weapons malfunction, as the type of
handgun Brown used, a Glock-19 is “one of the safest there is.”

Owens
and others called 911 after Bauer was shot, but paramedics were delayed
arriving at the scene because nobody could give dispatch an exact
address for the shooting range. Another range is located close by, which
confused dispatch and the EMTs, Jacobson explained. He said it took the
ambulance 14 minutes to arrive and nearly an hour for Bauer to get into
an operating room. 

911 audio played in court details frantic yelling from multiple agents, none of whom knew the address to give dispatch. 

“What happened after the shooting can best be described as chaos,” Jacobson said. 

While
waiting for emergency services, two other federal agents with the U.S.
Immigration and Customs Enforcement offered to take Bauer directly to
the hospital in their SUV with a police escort, but the IRS agents
refused. Jacobson said his expert witnesses will tell the jury that if
agents could have efficiently communicated the address to the 911
dispatch, or allowed the ICE agents to drive Bauer to the hospital
themselves, he’d likely still be alive. 

Federal Prosecutor Monica Ryan redirected the blame to Brown on rebuttal.

“Would any of that chaos had been set in motion had the defendant not shot Agent Bauer?” Ryan asked.

“No,” Owens answered.

Brown, who rejected a plea offer just days before trial began, cried in his chair as his attorneys cross-examined Owens. 

U.S. District Judge Steven Logan, a Barack Obama appointee, said the trial is expected to last two and a half weeks.