KANSAS CITY, Mo. — A former south-central Kansas sheriff’s deputy was stripped of his peace officer certification last month in connection to a deadly bean bag shooting in 2017.
The Kansas Commission on Peace Officers’ Standards and Training revoked the certification of former Barber County, Kansas, sheriff’s deputy Virgil Brewer following a commission review last month.
The commission’s review focused on an Oct. 6, 2017 incident in Sun City, Kansas - about 100 miles southwest of Wichita - in which Brewer used his personal 12-gauge shotgun to fire a bean bag round at a subject that Brewer and other deputies had engaged.
LINK | Read the commission’s report
Body camera video of one of the responding deputies captured the subject coming out of a shed and complying with commands when he received conflicting commands from Brewer and another deputy.
The commission’s report noted that at no time was the subject, identified as 42-year-old Steven Myers, informed he was under arrest or faced imminent deployment of bean bag ammunition.
The commission says that Brewer, who was 60 years old at the time, shot the subject in the center torso area with bean bag ammunition he had received from a coworker at a previous job in Texas. That ammunition was rectangle shaped - a shape of ammunition that had been discontinued for “several years” due to its ability to cause penetrating injuries.
Brewer, who had joined the sheriff’s department in January 2017, had not received training on bean bag deployment prior to the deadly shooting in October.
Prosecutor Melissa Gay Johnson with the Kansas Attorney General’s office charged Brewer in October 2018 with involuntary manslaughter.
After several years of legal filings, including a jury trial held in Wyandotte County, Brewer was found not guilty by a jury in November 2022.
As the criminal case continued, Myers’ widow, Kristina Myers, filed a civil lawsuit in federal court in November 2017 against Brewer and fellow deputy Lonnie Small - who was later dismissed from the case. That civil suit ended in June 2020 when Myers’ family reached a $3.5 million settlement paid out by Kansas officials.
“This is one of the toughest things I have ever had to do besides losing him and having to deal with being a widow,” Kristina Myers told the Associated Press in a June 2020 article. “It was absolutely shocking and unbelievable. I could not fathom what actually had just happened.”
In its report, the peace officers commission described Brewer’s conduct in the 2017 incident as “unprofessional” and lacking “good moral character".
The commission's report indicates Brewer left the Barber County Sheriff's Department in January 2021.
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