NILES — Within two minutes of a special agent’s meeting with Royal Mall Apartments maintenance worker Michael Cappy, it became clear Cappy was uncomfortable being in the middle of the Matthew Burroughs officer-involved shooting investigation.

Ohio Bureau of Criminal Investigations special agent Cory Momchilov’s interview with Cappy on Jan. 10 was audio recorded, and The Vindicator obtained a copy through a public records request to the Trumbull County Prosecutor’s Office.

Momchilov went to see Cappy after learning he was an eyewitness to the Jan. 2 shooting — the only non-police witness who saw the entire confrontation between Burroughs and Niles police, including the moments before officer Chris Mannella shot into Burroughs’ car, killing him.

Momchilov began by showing Cappy the handwritten statement Cappy gave to Niles police officer Steve Corll the evening of the shooting. Niles police Chief Jay Holland told the newspaper that Corll obtained the statement “when our investigators canvassed the area immediately after the shooting looking for witnesses, finding Mr. Cappy. BCI was not yet on scene.”

Niles police gave the statement to BCI. Cappy’s statement is among 1,600 pages of Burroughs documents obtained by The Vindicator. In the statement, Cappy described things he saw, but it doesn’t indicate whether Cappy expressed an opinion on whether he thought Mannella had acted appropriately.

After Momchilov handed Cappy the statement, Cappy read it over and said, “This whole thing is (expletive) up, man. Yeah, I mean I wrote this. I was actually kind of hoping this got lost. I was like, man, I don’t want to get involved in this.”

Mannella told BCI he fired three shots into the front windshield of Burroughs’ car because he feared Burroughs would run him over. Another officer fired into the car from the back because he feared for Mannella’s safety, but none of those shots hit Burroughs.

At the time of the shooting, Cappy was standing on the porch of the next apartment building, west of the one where the shooting took place.

Cappy walked the investigator through what he saw, but he was never asked his opinion of what he saw, nor did he express one voluntarily.

Cappy said he was not “close,” but he had a “clear view” of the shooting. “I saw everything,” he said, describing Mannella running up to Burroughs’ car, then being beside it. Cappy said Burroughs’ car was moving forward and back multiple times. The cruiser of officer Paul Hogan was in front of Burroughs’ car and another cruiser was behind it or coming up from behind. Burroughs was apparently trying to get away.

When Mannella fired, Cappy said it appeared Burroughs’ car had “just finished going back and probably (was) going forward.”

“I wasn’t close enough to see in the car or see what Matt (Burroughs) was actually doing, but the car was forward, reverse, forward, reverse. He was trying to leave, but when they shot, I feel like it was in the stop position. I can only assume it was going to go forward again or try,” Cappy told the BCI agent.

Then Cappy stopped in mid-sentence. “[Expletive], man, I hate this whole [expletive]. I just gave his car a jump like two, three weeks ago,” Cappy said of helping Burroughs get his car started. Cappy told Momchilov he also recently fixed Burroughs’ toilet, but he didn’t know Burroughs well.

The body cameras worn by officers James Reppy and Mannella show that after the shots were fired, Burroughs was apparently not moving inside the car, but the car slowly rolled forward about 30 seconds after the shots stopped. The car hit a big, metal garbage receptacle. Crime scene photos taken later appear to show Burroughs’ right foot on the brake pedal.

About halfway through the 21-minute BCI interview, Momchilov made Cappy aware that he and the rest of BCI work for the Ohio attorney general.

“We’re independently looking at this, so we don’t work for Niles,” Momchilov said of BCI. “We’re just trying to get all of the facts to give to the prosecutor so they can make an informed decision.”

Cappy then asked if it’s true that all of the officers involved in the shooting were wearing body cameras. “That shows everything, right?” Cappy questioned.

Momchilov replied, “Well, I mean, some of the guys didn’t have it on during the initial encounter that happened, so we’re just trying to talk to everybody, trying to piece everything together.”

Dennis Watkins, Trumbull County prosecutor, released a 35-page statement to the public Sept. 13 saying his office presented BCI’s investigation to a county grand jury, which refused to indict any Niles officers. At that time, Niles police also posted body camera videos from the shooting on the city’s website. None showed the lead-up to the shooting, only what was happening just after the first shots were fired.

Niles police also released a police department internal-affairs document saying Mannella and Hogan, who was also at the scene when the shooting started, failed to activate their body cameras before the shooting began. Both received a written reprimand and refresher training for the policy violation.

A BCI spokesman told The Vindicator there was no surveillance video from the apartment complex showing the shooting.

Cappy told Momchilov he is not aware of any other citizen who saw the shooting besides him.

Cappy said that before he wrote his statement for the Niles officer, he spoke to the officer about it. The quality of the BCI recording is poor in that section, and it is unclear what Cappy and the officer talked about.

Multiple attempts to talk to Cappy at his home and on a cellphone number BCI listed for him were unsuccessful.

The recorded BCI interview gave no indication Cappy was asked or stated whether he thought Mannella was justified in shooting at Burroughs.

BCI spokesman Steve Irwin said the reason a Niles police officer spoke to Cappy before BCI had a chance to talk to him was because Niles was conducting an internal-affairs investigation. He acknowledged that while BCI does “prefer that it get to interview witnesses first, that is not always necessarily the case.”

Cappy said because he saw a mention in an area newspaper that an unnamed maintenance worker witnessed the shooting and because a reporter had asked to talk to him, he stopped wearing his name on his uniform, hoping to avoid being questioned.

He said he told two people what he saw and later was concerned about how the story was being retold.

“They’re going around telling everybody like, ‘Well Mike saw it happen.’ I’m like, I didn’t say that part of it, you know. People adding (expletive) in.”

Toward the end of the BCI interview, Cappy asked Momchilov how involved he would have to be in the completion of the case. Momchilov replied, “It’s on body, or at least one body camera. I can’t say you’re not going to have to testify, probably not. I don’t know. What the prosecutor’s going to decide on the case; it’s up to them.”

Cappy said he didn’t want to testify.

“I don’t want to do that. I don’t want to influence this (expletive) at all, you know. I’m from Niles. I work here. You know what I mean? It sucks. It’s a horrible situation just for my job’s sake,” he said. Momchilov said it’s possible BCI could keep Cappy’s name private under certain circumstances, such as if a witnesses’ safety is compromised.

“I don’t want people mobbing me, like, ‘What happened? What did you see?’ Because I feel like that’s what’s going to happen,” Cappy said.

Cappy also asked about the surveillance cameras at the apartment complex, and Momchilov told Cappy investigators were told the surveillance camera near the shooting scene was “not working or hasn’t worked for years.”

erunyan@tribtoday.com