Police Brutality / Individual record
Leslie Sapp III
Leslie Sapp III, 47, was fatally shot by members of a U.S. Marshals fugitive task force in Pittsburgh on January 6, 2015.
- Record ID
- PB-078
- Incident date
- January 6, 2015
- Outcome
- Fatal
- Location
- Knoxville, PA
- Agency
- U.S. Marshals Service
- Category
- Fatal on-duty police shooting
- Age (reported)
- 47
What happened
Officers arrived at a Knoxville-neighborhood house before dawn to arrest Leslie Sapp III on outstanding felony allegations. According to Pittsburgh police, Sapp emerged at the top of a stairway holding what officers believed to be a firearm. Members of a task force, including a state trooper, sheriff's deputy and U.S. marshal, opened fire. The object was subsequently identified as a BB pistol rather than a conventional firearm. The Allegheny County medical examiner identified Sapp and reported fatal gunshot injuries. The source establishes the weapon misidentification and official account of an attempted arrest; the allegations for which he was sought were not a trial verdict.
Investigation & findings
The task force described its shooting as self-defense; this contemporary source does not establish a final independent legal review. The record should describe a BB pistol accurately, rather than simply calling it a real handgun.
Washington Post Fatal Force v2; 2015–2024
Source record details
- Source incident ID
- 17
- Race code in source
- B
- Race source method
- not_available
- Gender (source)
- male
- Armed status (source)
- replica
- Flee status (source)
- not
- Agency IDs (source)
- 26254
Sources & records
- Primary source
- Methodology and national police killings trackingMapping Police Violence · Dataset/methodology
- Fatal Force v2 — fatal on-duty police shootings, 2015–2024The Washington Post · Dataset
- Fatal Force methodology and data limitationsThe Washington Post · Methodology