By CBS Austin Digital Staff & Monique Lopez:
The family of 21-year-old Jackson Lieber has filed a lawsuit against the Liberty Hill police officer who shot and killed him last month.
The shooting happened Jan. 18, at a home on FM 1869, just west of Hwy 183 in Liberty Hill.
The Williamson County Sheriff’s Office said it happened at around 3 p.m. when Liberty Hill Officer Esteban Gomez-Sanchez responded to the scene for a trespassing call. Police say he got into an altercation with Lieber that ended with him being shot.
The new lawsuit claims Lieber had hit a mailbox with his car and may have gone to the home to seek assistance. For some unknown reason, Lieber got into an argument with the residents of the property, and “some of the residents used physical force to restrain and subdue him.”
The lawsuit goes on to say officers from the Williamson County Sheriff’s Office and Liberty Hill Police Department arrived — and that’s when Officer Gomez-Sanchez shot Lieber two times. He died later that day at a Round Rock hospital.
Lieber’s family says in the lawsuit that at the time of the shooting, he did not pose a threat to Officer Gomez-Sanchez, and the use of lethal force was excessive.
They are seeking a trial by jury for their wrongful death claim.
Lieber’s family has demanded transparency from the investigation and are looking for answers they say they still haven’t received. “As a father who has lost a son, let me tell you how incredibly callous it sounds to hear, ‘I can’t talk about an open investigation,’ when that investigation is the shooting death of your son by a public servant who is supposed to protect people,” Jackson Lieber’s dad Matt Lieber said in a press conference Wednesday.
The Liberty Hill Police Department says it’s cooperating with the Texas Rangers as it investigates the shooting.
“What I do know is that Jackson was not armed. Of course, only the officers on the scene were armed and, apparently, only Officer Gomez-Sanchez discharged his weapon,” said Matt Lieber. “I keep asking myself, if the threat of Jackson was so imminently dangerous, why didn’t any of the other officers feel the need to discharge their weapons?”
Matt Lieber says it took seven hours for authorities to notify his family of his son’s shooting.
“This has very much been a one-way conversation, we provide information, they refuse to tell us anything,” Lieber said. “Then, there’s the Liberty Hill PD and Williamson County Sheriff’s Office, they simply refuse to any of our requests for information — silence, secrecy.”
A vigil is planned Saturday by Lieber’s family at Veterans Memorial Park in Liberty Hill.