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Leslie Merritt DPS Interview, Phoenix Freeway Shootings (Beside the Dying Fire)
Documenting Reality Police, Fire, & Government Real Police Interrogations & Confessions Leslie Merritt DPS Interview, Phoenix Freeway Shootings (Beside the Dying Fire)

Leslie Merritt DPS Interview, Phoenix Freeway Shootings (Beside the Dying Fire)

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Leslie Merritt DPS Interview, Phoenix Freeway Shootings (Beside the Dying Fire)

Leslie Allen Merritt Jr. was never tried or convicted in the 2015 Phoenix freeway shootings, and all charges against him were dismissed before the case was sealed, leaving the attacks unsolved with no other arrests.

Between August 27 and September 10, 2015, eleven vehicles were reported hit by projectiles on Interstate 10 and State Route 202 in Phoenix. Police concluded eight strikes came from bullets and three involved other projectiles. The vehicles included cars, pickup trucks, box trucks, an SUV, a tour bus and a semi. No one was killed. The attacks occurred over about two weeks on one of Arizona's busiest freeway corridors, prompting drivers to avoid the route and authorities to post a reward for information.

Merritt was 21, lived in the Phoenix area, had two young children and owned a handgun he had pawned at a Phoenix-area pawn shop. Arizona Department of Public Safety criminalist Christopher Kalkowski concluded that bullets recovered from four shootings had been fired from that handgun. Merritt was arrested outside a Walmart in Glendale on the night of Friday, September 18, 2015, and booked on 28 felony counts. Six days later, a grand jury indicted him on 15 felony counts covering four Interstate 10 shootings on August 29 and 30, 2015, in which a tour bus, an SUV and two cars were hit. His bond was set at $1 million.

During an interview by DPS detectives at the time of his arrest, Merritt asked whether he was in custody over a traffic ticket and denied the shootings throughout. "I have not shot on any freeways," he said. "No one in my car or my family, my wife, nobody, has shot my gun on the freeway." Detectives said they had video placing him at the shooting scenes, and he asked to see it. A later defense filing said no video was shown to him and that the state highway agency did not record video on those freeways. Detectives separately questioned his fiancee, Dina Sauceda, and raised the possibility of domestic terrorism charges against her. At his arraignment, Merritt told the judge, "All I got to say is I'm the wrong guy, I've been telling the detectives that."

A firearms examiner retained by the prosecution later found that the DPS crime lab had reached a faulty conclusion. The examiner reported that the bullets could neither be identified as coming from Merritt's gun nor excluded from it, and two other ballistics experts reached similar findings. Merritt's lawyers also argued that the gun was in a pawn shop during the last of the four charged shootings.

On April 22, 2016, the Maricopa County Attorney's Office moved to dismiss all charges, citing forensic work that had to be completed before the case could proceed. The dismissal was without prejudice, allowing the charges to be refiled. Merritt, who had spent about seven months in jail, was released that week after a judge reduced his bond to zero. No charges have been refiled, no one else has been arrested, and the shootings remain unsolved. DPS Director Frank Milstead said after the dismissal that he still believed the evidence showed Merritt was the correct suspect.

In August 2020, a Maricopa County Superior Court judge granted Merritt a Notation of Clearance and ordered the case records sealed. Maricopa County paid $100,000 to settle claims against the county attorney's office that prosecuted him. His suit against the State of Arizona and DPS employees proceeded in the U.S. District Court for the District of Arizona, where most claims were resolved on summary judgment. Pre-indictment state law claims for false arrest, false imprisonment and aiding and abetting went to a jury, which returned a verdict for the state on November 6, 2020. The Ninth Circuit affirmed that judgment on August 16, 2022.

The video is a narrated analysis using police interview-room footage, not raw footage alone, and runs about 69 minutes. It covers the interview conducted by DPS detectives at the time of Merritt's arrest.
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Documenting Reality Police, Fire, & Government Real Police Interrogations & Confessions Leslie Merritt DPS Interview, Phoenix Freeway Shootings (Beside the Dying Fire)
Documenting Reality Police, Fire, & Government Real Police Interrogations & Confessions Leslie Merritt DPS Interview, Phoenix Freeway Shootings (Beside the Dying Fire)


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