Falkenberg: We expect more from our heroes than being sued by them

By Lisa Falkenberg

The wife's voice quivers. Her desperation is clear. The call to 911 is her last-ditch plea to save her husband, and maybe even her family.

For days, her husband, Kemal Yazar, a 43-year-old rug importer and loving, devoted father to their three young children in Seabrook, had been acting erratically. He refused to eat or sleep. He talked of apocalypse. He talked of President Barack Obama being the anti-Christ.

"My husband is disconnected from reality," Marlene Yazar is heard telling the operator from her mother's house in Katy, just before noon on Dec. 30, 2012. "He's just talking crazy things, like the world is going to end. And he's been like this for two or three days now."

The operator pounds her with questions and she answers them. No, he doesn't have a weapon, she says, but yes he could become violent if he thinks officers are coming to attack him.

Help is on the way, the operator says. A paramedic is first on the scene, but he quickly retreats after Kemal yells and throws a Bible at his back.

Harris County Deputy Brady Pullen arrives at 12:17 p.m., followed by another deputy. From here, accounts vary, but it's clear there's a struggle between Pullen and Kemal that leads the officers to draw Tasers and guns.

In less than 10 minutes, the delusional man is shot several times. He is pronounced dead an hour later at a Katy hospital.

The family is devastated. Marlene loses her soul mate and the family's sole provider. Her children, ages 10, 6 and 2, lose their daddy. Then it got worse.

Seeking damages

Carmina Figueroa, sitting next to daughter Marlene Yazar, is being sued by Harris County Sheriff's Deputy Brady Pullen in the aftermath of a shooting at her home that left her son in law - Yazar's husband - dead.

One of the deputies who was sent to protect the family decided to serve them instead - with a lawsuit.

Pullen, who according to an investigator's report, suffered "superficial wounds" during the incident, accused family members of "negligence and recklessness" for not fully warning him of the "violent threat" Kemal posed.

He also faults the caller for not telling the operator that Kemal, who had no criminal record or history of mental illness, recently had begun experimenting with a hallucinogen known as "DMT" he bought on the Internet. His wife later told investigators Kemal mixed the compound, known to be used shamanic rituals in the Amazon, with tea, and on at least one occasion, marijuana.

Pullen says he suffered a broken nose, needed surgery that required him to miss work, and had a concussion which affected his memory of the events. The deputy is seeking at least $100,000 in damages, including medical expenses, mental anguish, pain and suffering and loss of past earning capacity. The first hearing in the case is set for April 14 in Judge Patricia Kerrigan's court.

Oddly, the deputy didn't sue Kemal's wife, who placed the call, but her mother, Carmina Figueroa, whose name was on the home insurance policy. Figueroa wasn't home at the time. She was at work at the meat department of a Houston H-E-B, wrapping steaks and taking customer orders like she's done for 20 years. She says she wasn't even aware anyone called 911 until her son-in-law was already dead.

Compounds tragedy

In a recent interview, Figueroa said the lawsuit only compounds the tragedy, which has already taken so much from the family, including a home left riddled with bullet holes and bloodstains where she couldn't bear to live in anymore.

"The first thing I thought is this man is crazy," Figueroa said about the deputy. "Not only is he destroying our lives, but he's suing me."

Her Houston-based attorney, Dean Blumrosen was so appalled by the lawsuit he agreed to represent Figueroa for no fee. He has asked a court for sanctions against attorney Mark Long of New Braunfels for even filing the "groundless" claim. He recently sent Long a letter vowing to give up his law license if the deputy prevails in a case he says is offensive not only to a grieving family, but every law enforcement officer whose job entails inherent risk.

Long, a former Austin police officer, offered no apologies.

"I'm actually offended that people would think that police officers don't have civil rights to use civil law on their behalf. Everyone else does," he said. "If this case brings an awareness that people need to be completely, utterly honest with 911, and if people become aware that police officers have rights just like everybody else, I'm happy. Whatever else people think about me, I could care less."

Long said he and his client have no intentions of trying to bilk Kemal's mother-in-law. He says she should have just forwarded his letter about the deputy's claim to her insurance company rather than waiting for a lawsuit to be filed and then finding an outside lawyer to fight it.

In other words, she should have just accepted the insult to injury. I don't think so.

Warned 911 operator

This lawsuit is disturbing, not just because of its callousness, but because of the message it sends. Sheriff Adrian Garcia has refused to comment on the pending litigation. But he and others in his department ought to be concerned about the chilling effect it could have on citizens who may hesitate to call 911 for fear of getting sued.

Besides that, much of Pullen's case just doesn't add up. His lawyer's theory is that Marlene somehow "sugar-coated" the situation to the 911 operator, playing down her husband's potential for violence and omitting his drug use so that authorities would take him to a hospital instead of jail.

There's no evidence of that. Marlene told the 911 operator her husband could get violent. The operator didn't ask about drug use. And Marlene told me she didn't think to mention it because, as far as she knew, it had been weeks since Kemal used DMT.

"I didn't even know that's what it was," she told me, explaining she thought he was more than likely possessed.

As for her mother, who is the one being sued, Pullen's attorney says she had a duty to make the premises safe: "She can't just turn a blind eye to what's going on in her home and leave." But Figueroa says she had no knowledge of her son-in-law's violent state, or the 911 call.

In Texas, our law limits police and firefighters' right to sue in such cases, reasoning that they assume the inherent risk of their jobs when responding to emergency situations. The only exception is if someone is grossly negligent or intentionally tries to mislead the officer about danger.

Dangerous situation

To prove his case, Pullen needs to show that Figueroa knew about a danger that the deputy wasn't warned about. The truth is, Pullen got plenty of warning. Marlene warned in the 911 call. A call slip advised of a male who could get violent.

Then there's the paramedic, Percy Spradlin, who had the Bible thrown at his back. In his sworn statement, the paramedic, a field training officer with the Cy-Fair Volunteer Fire Department, says he requested a deputy to respond "priority 1" to the situation and instructed his partner to tell dispatch they were pulling out due "to an extremely violent patient." Most importantly, Spradlin states that he talked to Pullen before he entered the house, explaining "what had happened and that we had retreated from the scene for our safety."

It's true that Pullen faced a dangerous situation when he entered Figueroa's red brick home on that December afternoon. I don't know whether his use of force was warranted. The family says it wasn't, but Pullen, a peace officer for about 15 years, maintained in his statement that Kemal had tried to take his gun. A grand jury late last year declined to indict him or another deputy in the death.

What's not in dispute is that a citizen's call for help ended tragically. Now the family's loss has been made more tragic by a deputy's greed.

In this litigious culture, the definition of frivolity is ever expanding. We're almost numb to callous money-grabs.

But we expect more from people we hold up as heroes. We revere first responders because they risk their lives for ours, they run toward danger while we run away.

True heroes, though, possess a virtue as vital as their bravery. It is called decency.