seattlepi.com/news/article/o…
Before & after, the horrific incident below occurred:
He said the other motorist had a gun, but it was never found. He was suspended for 30 days, half of it held in advance, but spared termination because his supervisors believed "this guy had real potential," said Norm Stamper, who was police chief at the time.
Post Alley melee
What Dornay calls the "most traumatic incident of my life" began just after midnight on June 24, 2006, right after work. Dornay drove his personal Honda Goldwing touring motorcycle into a narrow Pike Place Market alley jammed with 75 to 100 pedestrians, by his own count, who were exiting the nightclubs.
He drove at walking speed, gunning the engine to get people out of the way. Some witnesses afterward said he acted like an aggressive biker; others felt his approach was unremarkable.
But an inebriated woman took umbrage. She mounted the wide wheel guard on the front of his bike and grabbed the windshield, to force him to stop. He did once, rummaging through his cargo compartment, presumably for his police identification. Failing to find his ID, he drove his bike ahead, carrying the woman on the front of his bike up to a dozen yards down the alley.
The woman's employer, a male lawyer, walked alongside, making nasty comments to Dornay. Dornay said the crowd size prevented him from turning around. Witnesses said the biker became extremely angry.
Dornay shoved the woman against a restaurant door, which infuriated onlookers.
A half-dozen men attacked Dornay, pulling his coat over his head and kicking and beating him to a point where he briefly lost consciousness. Nearly every witness account points to the fact that Dornay had a reason to fear death or permanent brain damage. He pulled out his police handgun and shot the lawyer, James Walker, in the stomach.
Many readers know the outcome of this publicized event: The lawyer survived. Seattle police were called off the investigation in favor of Kent police investigators. The Prosecutor's Office declined to prosecute anyone.
Pailca, the former OPA director, was critical of the initial investigation of the Post Alley incident by Seattle homicide officers. "Their early probe suffered from a strong appearance of early judgment and partiality," Pailca wrote in a Nov. 3, 2006, report. "This serves no one's interest, least of all the officers whose actions were under scrutiny."
On June 28, four days after the incident, Kent police asked Seattle officers to obtain the video from two cameras mounted in the alley, but were later told no video existed.
Pailca wrote: "I could see no discussion (in the SPD homicide investigation file) about a search for or identification of any video of the incident."
On July 11, a Kent officer returned to the alley and spoke to a building owner whose surveillance camera had not been examined. By then, the video in the camera, which was behind a nearly opaque door, had recycled, as it does every seven days, so nothing was available.
"The door is fairly solid, but has oval holes cut in it," building owner Dave Martin told the P-I. "What might have appeared would have been the impact of the woman being hurled against the door."
Pailca also requested an internal investigation of Dornay's behavior in the alley leading up to the shooting. But when she left the department a year ago, OPA had not been asked under the procedures to open a case. "There is ample evidence to support that his actions contributed to the need to fire," Pailca wrote in 2006.
Buck, the lawyer, said concerns about Dornay at the Post Alley shooting were misplaced: "You focus on the acts of a sober man dealing with an undeniably belligerent, aggressive and intoxicated woman who, along with Walker, simply wouldn't leave him alone. How about some focus on the drunken thugs that nearly killed Zsolt?"
"In my opinion, to say that this shooting was justified is ridiculous," said Michael Frost, Walker's former attorney. "Dornay fired six shots at a group of unarmed civilians who had come to the aid of a woman Dornay had just assaulted. It's a miracle no one was killed."
The city has paid Buck and his firm $76,000 to defend Dornay from litigation, two-thirds for the Nix case and the remainder to prepare for a possible suit by the shot lawyer, records show.