Cop says he feared Taser victim armed

A Mesa police officer being sued for using a stun gun to get a burglary suspect out of a tree told detectives he believed the man may have been armed.

The suspect, Bruce Bellemore, 32, fell from the tree and is paralyzed from the chest down.

On Feb. 11, Mesa officers went to a home in the 1500 block of East Mahoney Avenue after a neighbor reported seeing two people inside a home.

The men fled when police arrived, but Gerald R. Lynch, 37, a transient, was quickly apprehended. Police found Bellemore, who had just moved to Arizona from Nevada, in a 15-foot tree in a nearby yard.

According to police reports released Friday, officer Maxwell Van Natter was the last of four officers to surround the tree.

All of the officers, who were interviewed individually, told detectives they couldn’t see Bellemore’s hands to determine if he was armed. They also said Bellemore made no move to come out of the tree despite repeated commands.

Van Natter said he was surprised to find the other officers underneath the tree.

"I hate to say this, but I quite frankly felt that these officers had compromised their position," Van Natter said. "I remember thinking, ‘I cannot believe we are standing underneath a tree and we cannot see if this guy has a weapon pointed at us.’ "

Van Natter said he believed if he did not act swiftly, somebody was going to get hurt.

When Bellemore didn’t come out of the tree after being hit by the stun gun the first time, Van Natter fired it again.

Although Van Natter suspected Bellemore might break a leg or arm, he considered the risk nothing compared to an officer being shot.

Pepper spray simply would have come back down on him, Van Natter said.

According to police reports, Lynch told officers he inherited the property from his grandfather, the "famous investor, Merrill Lynch."

He said he and Bellemore were there to dig up gold and silver buried by his grandfather.

Detectives noted, however, that Merrill Lynch isn’t a person. Instead, it is an investment firm formed in 1915 by Charles Merrill and Edmund Lynch.

Lynch is awaiting trial on burglary, possession of burglary tools and criminal damage charges.

Mesa officials have asked the Maricopa County Attorney’s Office to charge Bellemore, who lives in Glendale, with burglary.

The department has also submitted the case to the county attorney’s incident review committee to evaluate Van Natter’s actions.

According to Bellemore’s lawsuit, the officers had a duty to help Bellemore climb down, and Van Natter’s use of the stun gun was "careless, unreasonable, negligent, grossly negligent and improper."