Four police officers acquitted of fatally shooting man driving weed truck

A district attorney for Siskiyou County, California, announced on June 14 that four police officers have been acquitted of charges after they shot and killed a man who drove a truck full of cannabis through a wildfire checkpoint.

But for the past year, witnesses and police officers have provided conflicting stories about what happened that day involving an Asian-American worker.

Lightning last June ignited the devastating lava fire, and amid the chaos, things unraveled when they stopped a man driving a truck with over 100 pounds of cannabis inside.

Officials ordered a number of vehicles to leave the area to escape the stream of flames. Soobleej Kaub Hawj, 35, of Kansas City, Kansas, was driving a pickup truck loaded with 132 pounds of cannabis. He most likely worked for one of the many illegal greenhouses in the area. He also had firearms in the truck.

Police say Hawj ignored orders to turn west onto County Road A-12, a major road, at a checkpoint on June 24, 2021, when a fire ravaged a rural area in Big Springs near the California-Oregon border, said District Attorney Kirk Andrus.

Officers say he panicked, fired at one of the officers, then they returned fire and shot him in the head, chest, arms and legs. Police say they found a loaded Colt 1911 .45 caliber pistol on Hawj’s lap. Other assault rifles were later found.

However, witnesses say that over 60 shots were fired at the victim and that the dashcam footage was not released. The incident prompted a nationwide outcry over suspicions of a possible anti-Asian American hate crime using the hashtag #StopAsianHate.

Officials tried to clear their names. The Sacramento Bee reports that District Attorney Kirk Andrus on Tuesday sent a nine-page letter outlining his findings to supervisors of officers in the Etna Police Department Sheriff’s Office and the California Department of Fish and Wildlife.

In his letter, Andrus said the purpose of the checkpoint was not to find cannabis, but simply to get people out of the area before it was engulfed in flames. However, Hawj thought he would be stopped and searched, Andrus said.

“He had a cash crop in the back of his truck that he seemed prepared to defend,” Andrus wrote. “Perhaps he was mistaken that residents would be directed to an area where they would be searched for marijuana. He would have been wrong.”

Police say Hawj also had a warrant out for his arrest in Mesa County, Colorado, on charges related to cannabis and guns.

Siskiyou County has already banned large-scale cannabis cultivation, but last year there were an estimated 5,000 to 6,000 illegal greenhouses growing weed in the Big Springs area.

Locals in the Big Springs area say the farms are typically used by immigrant workers of Hmong and Chinese descent. Refocused on the Hawj case, The Daily Beast portrayed “the embattled Hmong community of Northern California” who typically trim or work in cannabis fields.

Not everyone bought into the police story, which led to the investigation in the first place. The Southeast Asia Resource Action Center released a joint statement with Hmong Innovating Politics last August while the case was fresh.

“A witness said that over 60 shots were fired at Hawj during the incident,” the organizations wrote. In response, Zurg Xiong went on an 18-day hunger strike, urging the release of body and dashcam footage from the shooting and an independent investigation by another agency. On July 21, Oakland City Council Member Sheng Thao, Elk Grove School Board Trustee Sean Yang, Sanger Unified Board President Brandon Vang, and Sacramento City Council Member Maiv Yaj Vaj sent a letter to the California Attorney General Rob Bonta asking for an independent investigation into Hawj’s death. ”

“The shooting is a result of escalating racial discrimination against the Hmong and Asian American community in Siskiyou County, CA. In 2016, several incidents of voter suppression against Hmong residents were reported by the Siskiyou Sheriff’s Office. More recently, the Siskiyou County Board of Supervisors issued water ordinances targeting Hmong and Asian American farmers, while the Sheriff’s Office aggressively and disproportionately enforced them.”

You can read the letter to California Attorney General Rob Bonta in full. Also check out the petition in support of Soobleej Kaub Hawj’s family which ended up getting over 14,000 signatures.

For now, officials appear to be off the hook and will not be prosecuted over the matter.