Investigators on Friday continued to piece together what led a law enforcement officer to shoot and kill a 34-year-old Omaha man the day before.
Lancaster County Sheriff Terry Wagner said his office is handling the investigation into the death of Tyson Damian Hubbard, but he declined to divulge any new details in the case. The sheriff said he plans to finish the investigation and reveal his findings next week.
“There are just some things we need to keep close to the vest,” Wagner said Thursday afternoon.
On Thursday, three members of the Metro Fugitive Task Force, a joint operation of the U.S. Marshal, Lancaster County Sheriff and Lincoln Police Department, tracked Hubbard to a motel near 27th Street and Fletcher Avenue and tried to arrest him as he left the motel and got into a car.
Hubbard resisted arrest, struggled with law enforcement and an officer shot him, Wagner said. He declined to say where Hubbard was hit, but said pathologists performed an autopsy Friday.
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Officers immediately started chest compressions, and rescue crews took Hubbard to Bryan West Campus, where doctors said he was dead, Wagner said.
Investigators found a gun in the vehicle, but Wagner wouldn’t say if Hubbard reached for it during the struggle.
The sheriff again declined to identify the officer who shot Hubbard or the agency he works for.
Sheriff's investigators are still interviewing the officers who were involved, and Wagner said he wants their accounts to come from memory and not be tainted by something they see in the media.
Meanwhile, Rae McCoy said the 2002 Buick Century Hubbard was driving is her car, and she had given it to him to fix. Hubbard kept promising to return it and maybe even buy it, she said, but he never did.
“He just ran away with my car,” she said. “I was calling him -- call after call after call.”
Still, she described Hubbard as “an all-around good person.”
“He was the protective type,” she said Friday. “He was just in a rut. He was very stressed out about his ordeal.”
On Tuesday, a Lancaster County judge issued a warrant for Hubbard's arrest after he failed to show for a court appearance. Prosecutors had charged him with second-degree assault after he allegedly beat a 29-year-old man with a drill, breaking his eye socket and forcing doctors to close his wounds with staples, Lincoln police said.
Wagner said he put the four deputies involved in the shooting on administrative leave, as is policy. Lincoln Police Chief Jim Peschong and U.S. Marshal Mark Martinez said they each had one officer at the scene and have put them on leave pending Wagner’s investigation.
Martinez said it’s the U.S. Marshals' job to lead fugitive task forces such as this one.
“On a daily basis, we’re conducting fugitive investigations on the most violent people in the country,” he said.
