And Rick Anderson at the Seattle Weekly has a great story in this issue on that shooting, which occurred this past spring when Bellevue police came to serve a warrant on a suspect in Seattle.

After Russell Lydell Smith was shot to death in his car outside his Columbia City home in March by a Bellevue SWAT team, Seattle Police, who were also on the scene, said the officers were forced to shoot because Smith seemed determined to “drive them over rather than surrender.”

But as a King County inquest jury is likely to hear next week, Smith, a 51-year-old Seattle laborer and ex-con sought for questioning in five robberies, was killed in a 21-shot fusillade even though his car had nowhere to go. The gold 2000 Mercedes, having sped backward out of Smith’s driveway and crashed into a pickup truck, faced in the direction of a street dead end. The only way out was blocked by the pickup. A police armored vehicle had also moved in behind it.

Encircled by heavily armed SWAT officers commanding him to stop and surrender, Smith put the car in drive and accelerated, police claim. Within seconds, bursts of gunfire from three officers—two with automatic weapons—riddled his car doors and windows. Smith, within almost point-blank range of some officers, was hit eight times in his dead-end drive, the apparent fatal shot being a bullet to the side of his head. No officers or neighbors were hurt.

I wrote about this story at the time, but there was frustratingly little information forthcoming from either Bellevue or Seattle Police Department on the shooting itself, because of the active, ongoing investigation. Now that the inquest hearing is finally happening, the city and Smith's neighbors are starting to get some of the answers they so desperately wanted back in March.

A few important details Anderson writes about: police "did not report finding a gun on Smith," and they "gave conflicting impressions of his motives for the apparent attempt to escape without an exit route." Also, as to how the inquest will likely turn out: "Unanimous 'justified' verdicts have been the outcome of almost all of the more than 200 countywide cop-related deaths reviewed in the past 65 years."

Read the whole thing. The hearing before the inquest jury begins on Monday.