Attorney: no evidence of second gunshot at Bonty scene

WASILLA — An attorney representing the mother of a Wasilla man shot and killed by police now says there’s no evidence of a second gunshot.

Wasilla police officer Andrew Kappler, 28, fired once and killed Michael Bonty, 23, after responding to a domestic violence call in a house along Jack Nicklaus Drive shortly after midnight Sept. 15, authorties said. After the incident, Cynthia Bonty, present at the scene of the shooting, had told the Frontiersman that police had fired a gunshot, then used a stun gun on her son, then fired a second gunshot, based on sounds she heard after police had removed her from the scene.

The scene at the Bonty household that night was chaotic — Michael had a steak knife in each hand and was cutting himself, had grabbed his mother, and police had shot her son while she was in the room — and Cynthia likely mistook the sound of what her attorney now says was a second Taser discharge for a gunshot, according to attorney Curt Martin.

“My client heard three discharges,” he said.

While police and Cynthia both now say only one gunshot was fired at the scene, police maintained shortly after the shooting incident that officers had not discharged a Taser at all. The revised account is based on photographs provided by the funeral home that received Michael’s body, Martin said.

“I’ve viewed photographs of the body, and there’s only one bullet wound,” he said.

The shooting remains under investigation by state officials, said Alaska State Troopers spokeswoman Megan Peters.

Investigations of officer-involved shootings are typically referred to the Alaska Office of Special Prosecutions and Appeals, usually tasked with making a determination whether or not a particular shooting warrants legal action.

The case may also be handed back to the Wasilla Police Department for a determination as to whether responding officers followed department policy, and, more broadly, whether or not the case warrants changes to department policy, according to Peters.

Both Martin and police chief Gene Belden said a pathologist’s report hadn’t yet been completed. A spokesman for the State Medical Examiner’s office said the office does not comment on specific cases.

Belden declined comment because the investigation had been handed over to Alaska State Troopers.

“It’s an Alaska State Trooper case, so we won’t comment on it,” he said. “We don’t know exactly what they have or don’t have. They don’t speak on our cases and we don’t speak on their cases.”