According to the report, Feaster thought Thomas could be trying to escape from a potential felony vehicular manslaughter incident. He pulled his .45 caliber semi-automatic piston to cover Thomas.
A second later, the gun discharged once, hit Thomas in the neck, who fell back into the SUV.
Feaster told the responding officers that night that he did not intentionally fire his weapon. Normally, officers are trained to fire two shots when they intentionally fire their sidearms, but since there was no second shot it was an additional factor in leading investigators to believe Feaster's claim that the shot was unintended.
The report noted that since no one was killed, investigators needed only to examine those penal code sections dealing with the discharge of a firearm. They determined that the gun was not fired "willfully" or "under circumstances in which the display of the gun was unreasonable." Thus, investigators determined that there was no criminal negligence.
