Ryan Matthew Smith was drunk nearly to the state of unconsciousness when two Seattle Police Department (SPD) officers shot him 12 times inside a Queen Anne apartment, according to a newly released autopsy completed by the King County Medical Examiners’s Office. The autopsy showed Smith had 12 bullet entrance wounds and a blood alcohol level of 0.36, enough to put Smith at risk of falling into an alcohol-induced coma.
Smith was killed on May 13 in his girlfriend’s apartment after she called the cops and said he was threatening to kill himself and her. He was 31 years old. Police knocked down the apartment door just after 7:20 p.m. and found Smith standing with a knife in his hand. They quickly opened fire, as Smith’s girlfriend could be heard screaming from a barricaded bathroom not to shoot him.
Rose Johnson, Smith's mother, said she was “devastated” when she read the autopsy showing how many times he had been shot and how drunk he was.
“The evidence shows that he did not hurt anybody, he was really, scientifically, incapacitated almost and didn’t have the motor skills to hurt anybody,” Johnson said.
“Those two officers just decided to stampede, break down a door, and just rapid shoot at Ryan… There was zero thought to anything they were doing. To me, those types of people should not be holding a badge.”
In a body cam video released by SPD shortly after his death, Smith appears dazed as two officers shout for him to drop his knife. The two officers, Ryan Beecroft and Chris Myers, quickly open fire as Smith appears to make a motion toward the door. The two officers were standing in the hallway at the time and Smith never appears to leave the apartment during the exchange. Less than three minutes had passed between when the officers first arrived on the scene and when they opened fire.
The county’s autopsy, which was shared with The Stranger by Johnson, found 12 bullet entrance wounds and four exit wounds. Seven bullets were recovered from his body, but it’s not clear, according to the autopsy, exactly how many times he was shot. The medical examiner found bullet wounds on both sides of his neck, both his legs, his torso, and his right arm.
“Some of the entrance wounds may represent re-entry wounds, decreasing the overall number of times the decedent was shot,” the autopsy said.
A toxicology report found that Smith had THC, the active chemical in weed, in his system and a 0.36 blood alcohol level. Blood alcohol levels between 0.35 and 0.40 are described as “Loss of consciousness. Brink of coma” according to Stanford University.
Jonah Spangenthal-Lee, a spokesperson for SPD, said the department had not yet completed their Force Investigation Team report on the incident and declined to estimate when that report would be finished.
“We do not typically provide timelines for investigations as they are subject to change,” Spangenthal-Lee said in an e-mail.
Spangenthal-Lee said both Myers and Beecroft have returned to work since the incident. This is not the first time Myers has killed someone. In 2014, Myers was one of multiple officers who opened fire on a man after the man was allegedly shooting his weapon in his house. The Seattle Police Foundation awarded Myers a “medal of honor” for the shooting, according to a page on the foundation’s website that has since been taken down.
Johnson said the police should have done a better job of de-escalating the situation because they knew from the 911 operator that Smith’s girlfriend was already safely barricaded in the bathroom.
“They knew the situation they were involved in... They knew what he had in his hand... They knew she was away from Ryan, that she was in a bathroom… It just seemed like they had their mind made up and shot him and kept shooting him even after he was already down," Johnson said. “I just think it’s brutal, the whole situation was just unnecessary."
Johnson said she has reached out to multiple attorneys to try to start a civil case on Smith's behalf.
“Attorneys in Seattle won’t take the case because he was holding a knife, [even though] the video shows that he didn’t charge anybody, no one was hurt in the apartment,” Johnson said.
Smith grew up in California but would spend the summers in Seattle where his father lived, according a profile of Smith on Patch. Johnson said Smith returned to Seattle in 2018 and had been working odd jobs and living with a girlfriend in Queen Anne since then.
Johnson described him as a musically talented and shy person.
“He was shy,” Johnson said. “He was an introvert. He had a really big heart.”
Johnson said Smith was diagnosed with severe depression when he was 18 and was prescribed antianxiety and antidepression medications. Johnson suspected Smith was combining those medications with alcohol on the night SPD killed him, although the county’s autopsy does not mention those drugs.
Johnson said she has struggled to get information from the SPD and the mayor’s office since the shooting. She said she also has not been able to pay for Ryan’s remains to be put in a permanent resting place; although she said she has filed a claim with the state’s Labor and Industry's victim compensation fund, she has yet to receive any money. A GoFundMe page has been set up on Johnson's behalf to raise money for the costs of transporting Smith’s body back to California and other related expenses.
