Shot in the Dark: The Death of Joseph Nagle and the Missing Record of Justice

The Timeline MSP Gives

The MSP 5th District report places the stop and shooting inside a short, consequential window. At 22:04:07, Unit A6 called out a traffic stop at 26th St / 138th Ave on a silver Impala bearing plate EJV6635. At 22:07:56, dispatch checked the deputy’s status and the deputy indicated he was performing field sobriety testing. At 22:11:19, the deputy said he was “still testing,” with a garbled voice audible in the background. At 22:13:19, the deputy requested another unit. At 22:13:46, he reported he was “fighting with one.” At 22:14:41, he said “shot fired.” By 22:16:15, he reported he was doing CPR. At 22:21:15, Unit T2, identified in the MSP summary as Deputy Austhof, checked out on scene. The time of death was later called at 22:34.

The MSP report also says Sandy Pines surveillance showed vehicles similar to Nagle’s vehicle and the involved deputy’s patrol car traveling southbound past Sandy Pines Resort at 22:02, with Nagle’s vehicle followed by the deputy’s car. That matters because the stop was called out just over two minutes later.

The Plate Problem

The mistaken plate is not just a typo floating somewhere in the paperwork. The MSP supplement says the deputy’s LEIN log showed that at 22:03:10, the deputy ran Michigan plate EJV6675. Less than one minute later, at 22:04:07, Unit A6 called out the traffic stop at 26th St / 138th Ave on a silver Impala bearing plate EJV6635. MSP then noted that the plate affixed to Joey’s vehicle, EJV6635, was similar to the plate the deputy ran.

That sequence matters. The wrong plate query happened before the stop was called out, and the released report summary does not show the actual LEIN return for EJV6675. It does not show whether the wrong plate returned to another vehicle, no record, a different owner, a similar vehicle, or anything that could explain what the deputy believed when he initiated the stop. Later property records confirm Joey’s vehicle as a 2012 Chevrolet Impala with plate EJV6635, while the vehicle is described elsewhere as silver and later entered into property with primary color “lavender.” That may be a database color-code issue, but it underscores why the native LEIN return and registration data matter.

What Does Not Match Cleanly

Additional Inconsistency Audit

What The Scene Measurements Show

The released measurement list is more useful once it is mapped. The shoulder and centerline points establish the road. The tire points place two vehicles in a south-facing line, with Vehicle 1 north of Vehicle 2. The body points place Joey between the two vehicles, with the head north and west of the feet. The casing plots near the feet. The flashlight plots farther south and west, between the body and Vehicle 2. The glasses and driver’s license plot beside Vehicle 2, near the driver-side area if Vehicle 2 was facing south.

What The Video Record Actually Means

The absence of Allegan County bodycam or dashcam is not the same thing as absence of all video. The MSP report says Sandy Pines Public Safety Officer Philip Holscher’s bodycam verified his role in lifesaving measures. Sandy Pines surveillance showed vehicles similar to Nagle’s car and the deputy’s patrol car passing the resort southbound. Gun Lake Tribal PD and Wayland PD had responding-officer video. MSP Wayland had bodycam and in-car footage from troopers.

But none of that fixes the central gap. The report says the involved Allegan County deputy did not have ACSD body-worn or in-car footage. The recordings that exist appear to document the approach, medical response, scene security, and later investigation. The critical question remains what happened between the stop, the field-sobriety phase, the fight transmission, and the shot-fired transmission.

The Witness Account That Does Not Fit Neatly

MSP interviewed a nearby resident who reported hearing someone shout “no” three times, each time sounding more desperate, followed by a single gunshot. The resident later told attorney Thomas Siver it sounded like a younger male voice, then clarified to MSP that he could not say whether the voice was older or younger, only that it was male and maybe sounded panicked.

Evidence And Medical Record Notes

The MSP report says Nagle’s driver’s license, black glasses, and a black flashlight were found near the roadway scene. A red folding knife was found inside Nagle’s vehicle between the passenger seat and passenger door. Suspected marijuana cigarettes and Nagle’s phone were also seized from the vehicle. MSP attended the autopsy, where Dr. Jared Brooks reportedly advised that the entry wound was in the chest, the projectile traveled through the heart, and the bullet lodged near T12-L1.

The scanned and searchable packets also show later investigative interest in the deputy’s Taser. MSP downloaded the Taser history on July 7, 2022 and the report states it appeared the Taser was not used on the date of the incident. The scanned packet includes Evidence Sync pages, which should be requested in clean native form if they have not already been obtained.

What Joey’s Toxicology Actually Shows

The NMS Labs report in the scanned packet reports Delta-9 Carboxy THC at 57 ng/mL in iliac blood and Delta-9 THC at 16 ng/mL in iliac blood. It also reports presumptive-positive urine screens for cocaine/metabolites and cannabinoids. The visible toxicology pages do not show a positive methamphetamine finding. They also do not turn the urine cocaine screen into a confirmed blood level or a clean impairment conclusion.

The drug theme was already being built before those toxicology results were received. On June 16, the vehicle search produced suspected marijuana cigarettes. On June 17, the supplement records disputed family/source claims about drugs, a vape pen, rolled-up dollar bills, alleged cocaine and meth use, and a possible drug reason for Joey being in Allegan. Other interviews later added claims about cocaine use and strange behavior. These statements should be treated as claims, not established facts, especially where family/source accounts are disputed. But on July 7, the case status was still “open, pending autopsy and toxicology results.” The report says the autopsy and toxicology results were not received into the master file until July 27, 2022.

That distinction matters because the investigation spends significant energy building a drug-use narrative around Joey. Toxicology is evidence, but it is not a substitute for the missing camera record, the deputy’s full force account, the unused Taser issue, the downward close-range shot, or the scene measurements. It also makes the missing officer-testing record more glaring, not less: Joey’s body was tested and narrativized, while I do not see a comparable public drug or alcohol test for the involved deputy.

The Blood Explanation Was Accepted Too Easily

Criger personally observed the involved deputy after the shooting. The MSP report says the deputy was in uniform with what appeared to be blood on his hands and red marks on his neck and face. The deputy said his nose had been bleeding. Criger observed a small amount of blood on the deputy’s shirt, and the deputy said that blood was his own. When Criger asked about the blood on the deputy’s hands, the deputy said he had performed first aid on Joey and that the blood on his hands belonged to Joey.

That may be true. But the released narrative appears to accept the deputy’s explanation without showing the public a confirmatory lab trail. Criger photographed the suspected blood on the deputy’s shirt, the marks on his face and neck, the vest mark, and the pants. The packet also shows the deputy’s uniform shirt was seized. What I do not see in the released materials is a clean public accounting of whose blood was tested where: shirt, hands, vest, pants, radio connector, or other gear.

What The Autopsy Adds

The autopsy report, Case W22-0791, adds facts that should be read beside the radio timeline and the absence of initiating-deputy video. Dr. Jared Brooks classified the cause of death as gunshot wound of the chest and the manner of death as homicide. In death-investigation language, homicide means death caused by another person; it does not by itself decide whether the shooting was criminally justified.

The entrance wound was slightly right of the center of the chest. The bullet path went through the soft tissues of the chest, the right fourth intercostal space near the sternum, the right ventricle, the descending thoracic aorta, and into the twelfth thoracic vertebral body. The path is described as front to back, slightly right to left, and downward. The report documents gunpowder stippling around the wound extending up to 2.4 centimeters away, but no muzzle imprint and no gunpowder soot.

The autopsy also documents additional injuries: abrasions or contusions on the forehead, lower lip, chest, arms, forearms, right palm, right-hand joints, right thigh and leg, left elbow, left knee, and left leg. The neck dissection found no hemorrhage in the anterior neck musculature, and the hyoid bone and thyroid cartilage were intact.

What Do I Think Happened?

Based on the evidence, I think the deputy likely approached Joey already on edge from the BOLO and the similar-but-wrong plate query. I think the stop escalated, Joey was pulled or ordered out of the car, and a struggle followed. Joey’s glasses, driver’s license, and the deputy’s flashlight ending up on the ground near the vehicle are not small details. They are the physical remnants of the part of the encounter the public cannot see because there was no initiating-deputy camera record.

My theory is that Joey’s glasses fell during the scuffle and that he may have bent down or lowered himself to retrieve them. The autopsy does not prove that exact body position, but it does support the broader question: the shot entered the front of Joey’s chest and traveled downward. That is consistent with Joey being lower than the deputy in some way: crouched, bent, kneeling, falling, or otherwise below the muzzle line. If the deputy interpreted that movement as reaching for a weapon, that would explain the fatal decision without making it justified.

This theory also fits the other unresolved fragments: the bullet trajectory, the blood in or around the vehicle record that still needs to be pinned down, the deputy’s flashlight on the ground, and Joey’s glasses and license near the door area. It does not fit a clean official narrative that pushes the decisive action away from the car or treats the evidence scatter as incidental.

According to sources, police were also adamant about getting Joey’s mother to unlock his phone. That matters. Police often seek phone access for timeline, contacts, location, impairment, and state-of-mind evidence. But in a case where Joey was the person shot by police, the urgency around his phone raises a fair question: why did the investigation move so quickly toward building a narrative around Joey, while the deputy’s missing camera record, unused Taser, exact body position, and full force decision remained behind redactions?

It is not a coincidence that body cameras changed the accountability landscape. Body cams are not perfect. Officers can fail to activate them, block them, angle them, mute them, or shut them off. But they still matter because they make it harder for the most important minutes of a person’s life to disappear into a police summary. If we do not require those measures, then the same question remains: who is watching the watchmen?

The Report Reads Steered

The MSP report does not simply document the shooting. It builds a frame around Joey. It gathers stories about his behavior earlier that day, his FedEx route, his comments to women in stores, his alleged drug use, his phone contents, his social media, his wrestling history, and his conversations about Kanye West. Some of that may be investigative context. But when the person being excavated is the person police killed, and the officer’s name, camera record, full statement, drug/alcohol status, and force decision remain largely insulated, the imbalance is obvious.

The Kanye West material is a good example. The report treats comments about Kanye West and “being in purgatory” as part of a strangeness narrative. But basic internet context matters. Kanye-related online rabbit holes, including the Kanye Quest 3030 / Ascensionism ARG discourse, were real internet phenomena that drew plenty of people into bizarre threads without making them mentally unstable or dangerous. A detective trying to understand a young person’s comments should have at least checked whether those references mapped onto an internet rabbit hole before using them as behavioral evidence against a dead man.

That concern gets sharper because the lead MSP report is built around D/Lt. Shane Criger while the broader MSP credibility backdrop includes Sgt. Bryan Fuller and the Ray McCann case. Fuller is not a minor credibility problem. Clutch Justice has documented the Fuller record, including the federal jury’s $14.5 million verdict tied to fabricated evidence and constitutional violations. Prison Legal News reported that Fuller and fellow Det. Shane Criger worked together in the McCann investigation, including arranging McCann’s sworn testimony about his whereabouts before McCann was charged with perjury. Public reporting also places Criger as the person who brought Fuller into the McCann investigation.

That is the pattern that makes the Nagle report so alarming. In McCann, the investigation moved toward McCann, then the process produced the sworn-statement/perjury trap that helped put an innocent man in prison. In Nagle, the report again reads steered: Joey is searched, explained, pathologized, and narrativized while the officer’s name, camera record, full statement, toxicology status, exact force decision, and Taser choice remain protected or incomplete in the public record. The parallel is not that the two cases are factually identical. The parallel is the investigative posture: build the target, preserve the state actor.

That history also makes it harder to know what portions of the Nagle narrative are reliable. When the investigator writing the frame has a documented connection to a prior fabricated-evidence case involving Fuller, disputed statements in the Nagle file cannot simply be treated as neutral context. They have to be separated from verified physical evidence, timed records, lab results, original audio/video, and independently corroborated facts.

That makes the question unavoidable: what conflict screening, supervisory review, or disclosure analysis occurred before Criger’s report was treated as neutral in another case where police conduct was the central issue? When a report appears to steer attention toward Joey’s supposed instability while the officer’s most important accountability facts remain missing or redacted, skepticism is not paranoia. It is basic source evaluation.

The Taser Question

The Taser point cannot be treated as a footnote. The record shows the deputy had a Taser, MSP downloaded the device history, and the report says it appeared the Taser was not used. That creates an obvious use-of-force question: if a less-lethal tool was available, why did the encounter move from field-sobriety testing and a physical struggle to a fatal gunshot without a documented Taser deployment?

That question should be tested against the actual policies in force on June 16, 2022: Allegan County Sheriff’s Office use-of-force policy, Taser policy, escalation/de-escalation policy, training records, and any mutual-aid or MSP investigative standards used to evaluate the shooting. MSP protocol may be an important benchmark for how the shooting should have been reviewed, but the involved deputy’s governing policy was likely ACSD’s policy. The public record should not collapse those two things.