A police officer in Virginia was arrested for shooting a sergeant outside of a bar in February, and a released 911 call indicates that he believed he was about to be raped.
Investigators initially said that James City County police officer 24-year-old Michael Rusk had gotten into a “verbal argument” with Sgt. Christopher Gibson outside of a bar in Williamsburg before shooting him on Jan. 25.
Video of the interaction was obtained by WAVY-TV and appeared to show Gibson, 38, coming on to Rusk and the officer refusing his advances.
The interaction continues outside the bar, where Rusk appears to push Gibson away.
WAVY also obtained the recording of the 911 call that Rusk made after shooting the sergeant. In the recording, the officer identifies himself and gives his badge number to the dispatcher.
“I shot Sergeant Gibson!” he says on the recording. “I pulled a gun on him because he was [expletive] advancing on me.”
Rusk’s father, Jason Rusk, told WAVY that his son had been the target of Gibson’s advancements for about a year before the incident.
“We just kind of wrote it off as a superior looking after a subordinate,” said Jason Rusk. “But it started to get creepy.”
He said that Gibson would show up out of nowhere and on streets where his son’s girlfriends lived.
“There was extremely inappropriate touching. The stalking, the grooming,” he added.
On the 911 call, Michael Rusk told the dispatcher that Gibson wouldn’t stop making advances on him.
“I told him to stop. He kept going. I thought he was gonna rape me,” he said on the recording.
Rusk shot Gibson about an hour after the last interaction caught on video at the bar. Gibson was grazed by one bullet in the cheek and he was also shot in the abdomen and the shoulder.
“If I had a daughter in the same position as my son, we wouldn’t even be here,” Jason Rusk pointed out. “They would have listened, we wouldn’t have an innocent person fighting for their freedom.”
He was charged with malicious wounding, the use of a firearm in the commission of a felony and discharging a firearm within city limits.
Rusk’s family and attorneys say the videos and the call support the claim that he was acting in self-defense, and they hope that the charges against him will be dropped.
Here’s the news video about the incident:
JCCPD officer who shot his sergeant: ‘I thought he was going to rape me!’www.youtube.com
Like Blaze News? Bypass the censors, sign up for our newsletters, and get stories like this direct to your inbox. Sign up here!