WILMINGTON — A week after Wilmington police broke into a downtown home and tased someone inside, the department announced it had completed its investigation into the incident, saying residents were uncooperative and acted violently in the minutes before one of them began filming the incident.
It began 1:10 a.m. on Monday, August 17, when a resident from 420 Wright Street reported a male subject who had called him a racial slur and threatened him with a knife, according to a statement issued Monday afternoon.
“When officers arrived on scene, 27-year-old Bryan Rivera-Cota and 37-year-old Jimmy Valimont were on the front porch of the residence. An officer approached the front gate and asked who called 911. In the four minutes and 50 seconds Wilmington police were on scene prior to the start of the Facebook video, Rivera-Cota and Valimont were uncooperative, providing several conflicting answers to officers’ questions. Rivera-Cota showed clear signs of impairment.”
According to the WPD, Valimont told officers at one point he “may have called 911” but then refused to provide further information. Valimont had posted a video of the incident to his Facebook page hours later, stating that he had called the police because there had been prostitutes in the neighborhood.
Related: 911 records — New details, more questions after Wilmington police break into downtown house
“At one point Valimont told officers he may have called 911, but then refused to provide further information. They continued to say there were ‘prostitutes’ at ‘Fourth and Wright’ instead of providing information regarding the subject armed with a knife,” the department claimed.
The male officer then attempted to open the front gate upon “reasonable suspicion,” and the two men became violent, according to the WPD. The department did not specify what crime the officer suspected had been committed.
“The female officer on scene was hit in the head and had her arm pinned in a doorway. Her arm can be seen bleeding in the video. The male officer had his leg shut in the front gate and was pushed off the porch. The glass of the front door was broken during the struggle,” according to WPD.
The video begins with two WPD officers attempting to break into the front door on the left side of the front porch, refusing to answer repeated questions by the filmer and another man as to what they were doing at the house. A female officer then walks by the filmer and yells, ‘Move!” before appearing to push his recording device to the ground.
The sound of glass breaking can be heard as the camera lied on the porch, followed by the apparent screams of a man in pain. After the camera is picked up, it shows the two officers at the door on the right side of the porch with the male officer holding a deployed taser gun, its chord running through a broken window on the door.
“While attempting to arrest Rivera-Cota following these injuries, the male officer deployed his taser through the front door,” the department said. “Rivera-Cota then ran upstairs and jumped from a second-story window to the ground before taking off in a sprint. He was pursued and taken into custody, and remained combative throughout his arrest.”
The department said Rivera-Cota was booked into New Hanover County Jail, where he was charged with false alarm/molesting a fire system for “setting a sprinkler off during a mental episode.”
He was originally charged with one count of resisting public officers and two counts of assault on a law enforcement officer while inflicting serious injury and was given a $70,000 secured bond.
Valimont was also arrested and charged with resisting, delaying, or obstructing public officers and released hours later on a $250 unsecured bond.
“The agency has reached out to both Valimont and Rivera-Cota in the days since the incident and both have declined to speak to investigators. No formal complaints against any of the officers on scene that night have been filed,” according to the department.
The WPD said it has worked since the incident last week “to find accurate and complete answers in regards to what occurred that night.”
“[The] Facebook video tends to tell one fraction of the whole story, and it takes time to reassemble the events around it. We will always make an effort to get the truth out to the public as soon as possible,” according to the department.
