Only on CBS13: Sacramento woman found "not guilty" of assaulting police details the moment they shot her
SACRAMENTO -- The bullet scars on the upper arm of Kyrieanna Liles, 24, serve as an obvious reminder of the November encounter with police that would forever change her life.
Still, Liles says the emotional wound will take the longest to heal. Rancho Cordova Police Officers, claiming self-defense, opened fire on her fleeing car after a tense encounter in November 2023, striking her twice.
"I know I'm safe and I'm fine but part of me just doesn't want to remember it at all," said Liles.
Liles sat down exclusively with CBS13's Ashley Sharp to share her side of the story for the first time since being found 'not guilty' of assault on an officer and being released from jail.
What happened leading up to the shooting?
Liles first called Rancho Cordova police herself on November 22, 2023, asking for help finding her missing dog that she believed was in a neighbor's backyard.
She claims to CBS13 that on a prior occasion when her dog had gotten out of her home on Malaga Wy., one of her neighbors had threatened he would kill the dog if it wandered onto his property again.
Liles says this is why her emotions were heightened that day as she searched for her dog and why she armed herself with a knife when she went to look for it.
"You were afraid someone might hurt the dog?" asked CBS13 reporter Ashley Sharp.
"Yes. I was alone, by myself, afraid. Even my roommates at the time said, 'Take something with you. What if he does have her?' " responded Liles.
Liles was captured on doorbell surveillance video that day going to the front door of a different neighbor's home, holding that knife in her hand.
It was a conversation between Liles and those neighbors as she tried to find her dog that led them to also call police that day.
Bodycam video shows when police interviewed those neighbors they described the tense encounter with Liles when she believed her dog could be in their yard. The neighbors told police Liles was holding that knife but did not directly threaten them with it.
"Even though the police officers had established that was not illegal or a crime, that's what the DA tried to scare the jury with," said Liles of her trial and the fact she had a knife that day.
Liles says she looked into the backyard of those neighbors and tried to call for her dog but it was not there.
Though the original call to police made it seem like Liles had trespassed on their property, she was not charged with a crime.
Court documents from Liles' trial reveal that deputies even communicated to each other that no crime had been committed.
A 911 dispatcher later called Liles back that day, asking her if she was armed with a knife.
Liles told the dispatcher that she was not armed with a knife, that she was sitting in her house and had found her dog. She then hung up the phone.
The shooting: second-by-second
After Rancho Cordova Police interviewed those neighbors, they walked over a block to Liles' home and spotted her sitting in her car in her driveway.
She says she had just gotten back to her house after retrieving her dog from another neighbor's home. She was on the phone when an officer knocked on her driver's side window.
Liles told the officer she "was dealing with something right now" and she did not want to talk and then shut her car door.
The officer then opens the door back up and asks her to step out of the car and that they "had to talk about something."
Bodycam video of the interaction reveals, though, the officer was asking her to get out of the car; he did not explain why. He did not tell her she was under investigation or announce that he was an officer with the Rancho Cordova Police Department.
Liles says "no" to his demands multiple times and tells the officer, "leave me alone."
The officer again asked her to step out of the car and she responded that she "didn't do anything wrong."
He then attempts to physically pull Liles from the driver's seat, Liles yells "let go" and then reverses her vehicle down the driveway.
In this moment, two deputies on scene fire a total of ten shots at Liles' fleeing vehicle as she drives through her front yard to get away.
They claim self-defense, testifying in court that they were in danger when Liles drove her car forward in the direction of the deputy who had been at her window.
Liles was shot twice in the arm and none of the officers were injured. She was arrested nearby about 20 minutes after the shooting and was booked into the Sacramento County jail on a charge of assaulting a peace officer.
The trial
Liles' public defender Carrie Claremon told CBS13 that she relied heavily on the bodycam video to prove her client's innocence, even though she was not permitted to show any seconds of video showing the actual shooting to the jury.
She instead used frames of video before the shooting to show that Liles' intent was never to assault or hurt an officer and that when the deputy ran and eventually was in the path of her car, she hit her brakes, turned her wheels and went the other way.
"Did it ever feel like you would be putting them in a path of danger when you drove away?" asked Sharp.
"No. Definitely not. I knew exactly where I was going," said Liles.
"Why did you chose to drive away in those moments?" asked Sharp.
"I saw that they had guns and I was scared they were going to shoot me," Liles responded.
Last week when Liles' heard her verdict of "not guilty," she was overwhelmed with emotion.
"Oh, I instantly started crying. It was all of this staying tough and getting through it all, it was such a relief off my shoulders, you know?" said Liles.
Since the day of the officer-involved shooting, Liles has been incarcerated.
She spent six months in jail on a $500,000 bond for a crime the jury found she did not commit.
"I was so scared," said Liles. "I had to prepare myself for the worst. Three to five years is a long time. If six months was hard, just imagine. I had to miss Thanksgiving, Christmas, New Years, my big sister's wedding. Those are all things I will never be able to get back."
Liles says it was traumatizing for her to be in the room with the deputies when they testified at her trial.
"It was really hard to see them. I was shaking so bad. I was trying to drink water and I shook, I was just scared of them. The fact that they shot me and I have that memory of their faces in my brain," said Liles.
Their testimony centered around the fact that they believed they acted in self-defense and felt they were in danger in those moments. They say that is why they opened fire as she fled.
"In that moment, I maybe overreacted but I was just so scared," said Liles.
"Do you feel like you were having a mental health episode or breakdown before you fled?" asked Sharp.
"It wasn't like a mental breakdown. But the things I suffer from are PTSD, anxiety, and depression from childhood. Those things come into play when it comes to rough situations like that where I am afraid," said Liles.
Liles and her attorneys argue the deputies made no attempt to de-escalate this situation, and had they tried to, this may have never happened.
A federal lawsuit filed
Liles earlier this year filed a federal lawsuit, alleging the entire encounter with police from the very beginning was unlawful.
"When people watch that video of your interaction a lot of times their first question is, 'Why didn't you just get out of the car? Why didn't you just comply?' What is your response to that?" asked Sharp.
"They didn't really have any rights to be on my property. They opened my door without a warrant and started assaulting me," said Liles. "There was no reason for them to proceed interactions with me at all. They had no reason to speak to me. They just said prior to approaching me I didn't commit a crime. So, what was the point of them coming up to me? I made it clear that I did not need anyone's help looking for my dog anymore."
That is the heart of the lawsuit: that Liles' civil and constitutional rights were violated from the moment the officer first approached her and demanded she get out of her car in her driveway.
It also alleges that Liles' mental health limitations played a role in her response and were not considered.
"Plaintiff Kyrieanna Liles' disabilities have cause her to become paranoid, easily confused, defensive, agitated, stressed, fearful and anxious. [Her] disabilities have made it difficult for her, at times, to process information and to verbalize her own thoughts, feelings and emotions," the lawsuit reads.
The County of Sacramento, the Sacramento County Sheriff's Office, Sheriff Jim Cooper, the City of Rancho Cordova, the Rancho Cordova Police Department and the individual deputies involved are all being sued by Liles.
The Sacramento County Sheriff's Office is named because the agency is contracted to provide the deputies that staff the Rancho Cordova Police Department.
"If you could go back to that day, would you do anything differently?" asked Sharp.
"No. Probably not. I didn't do anything wrong that day. The officers named in the lawsuit, everybody involved in covering it up will be the ones facing the problems that will come with their actions," said Liles.
Liles' lawsuit goes back before a judge in civil court in July.
The Sacramento County Sheriff's Office told CBS13 they cannot comment on this story or confirm if the officers involved faced any disciplinary action because of that pending civil suit.
A spokesperson did confirm the officers are still on the job.
In a December news release, a spokesperson for the department said, "Please understand we do not draw any conclusions about whether our deputy acted consistent with our policies and the law until all the facts are known and the investigation is complete. Independent review of the officer-involved shooting will be conducted by the Sacramento County District Attorney's Office."
It is not clear if those investigations into the use of force are still ongoing.