A white Minneapolis man accused of shooting and critically injuring his Black neighbor was arrested early Monday following a SWAT standoff after the police department faced backlash for failing to address his escalating threats, which turned violent.
John Herbert Sawchak, 54, was arrested in connection with the shooting of his neighbor, Davis Moturi, 34, in the neck on Wednesday.
Police admitted they had failed Moturi by failing to prevent Sawchak's ongoing harassment after a number of complaints.
Sawchak surrendered outside his home around 1:30 a.m. ET after a five-hour standoff in which a negotiator used a loudspeaker to urge him to leave his residence and police threatened to use gas.
"Ultimately the individual was safely emerged from the house prior to us needing to insert gas into the house,” Police Chief Brian O’Hara said at a news conference at 2:30 a.m. Monday.
“That was our next step we prepared to do. We told [the] individual we were about to do it, and immediately prior to that at about 1:24 am, he emerged from [the] rear of [the] residence and surrendered,” O’Hara said.
O'Hara said his team "very methodically and systematically" gave the suspect announcements and updates about what was happening.
Sawchak was charged last week in connection with the shooting, during which he opened fire on Moturi from an upstairs window as he was pruning a tree, according to court documents. Moturi was hospitalized with a fractured spine, two broken ribs and a concussion.
Moturi had contacted police multiple times about what he said was Sawchak’s escalating harassment, but police had failed to arrest him, saying that he has mental illness and possesses firearms and that executing a warrant was considered high-risk.
Early Monday O’Hara admitted: “Yes, we failed this victim — he should not have been shot.”
He said that there had been dozens of attempts to make contact with Sawchak and that surveillance was undertaken before to the shooting, but with no success, since April.
“But I will say this: We had no reason to suspect that he would shoot the neighbor from inside the house,” O’Hara added.
O'Hara said at the 2:30 a.m. news conference that police had surrounded Sawchak's residence for the last several days in an attempt to arrest him and had exhausted all "peaceful" efforts before they escalated use of force with a SWAT team and special tactics.
“Minneapolis police officers waited for days for the individual to emerge from the house, and he never did,” O’Hara said, but officers were able to confirm he was inside and spoke with his family multiple times to gather information about his mental health history.
Officers had tried dozens of phone numbers and email addresses for Sawchak, and they tried to reach him via a psychiatrist and family members before last night’s operation, police said. In the standoff, officers inserted a phone into the residence and called it constantly in a bid to make contact.
“We identified issues of concern, including issues that the individual had both firearms inside and also had knowledge of improvised explosive devices,” O’Hara said.
O'Hara said the shooting was caused by Moturi’s cutting a tree Sawchak and his mother had planted.
“Ultimately what precipitated the shooting was that the cutting of a tree that the individual had planted with his mother, who apparently he had a deep attachment to that, was what prompted the shooting, I believe,” he said.
At the time of the news conference, a full search of the residence had not yet been completed, and firearms believed to be in the home had not yet been recovered.
Sawchak was booked at 2:30 a.m. on multiple warrants. He was charged last week in Hennepin County with attempted murder, first-degree assault and felony harassment and stalking, enhanced for racial bias, in connection with the shooting of Moturi.
The delay in arresting Sawchak had sparked outrage among Minneapolis City Council members, some of whom wrote a letter to O’Hara and Mayor Jacob Frey accusing police of failing to protect Moturi.
At the news press conference Monday, however, Frey defended the police. “What we had tonight was an extraordinarily dangerous situation. ... Our officers did this the right way,” he said.