SPD: Officer arrested on drug charge before apparent self-inflicted shooting

A veteran Seattle police officer who shot himself after he was arrested for drug possession has died, a Harborview Medical Center representative tells KIRO 7 Eyewitness News reporter Deborah Horne.

At a news conference Thursday afternoon, Seattle Police Department officials said Richard F. Nelson, 50, was arrested early Thursday morning. An investigation suggested he may have been pocketing drugs that should have been logged as evidence.

Deputy Chief of Operations Nick Metz said who investigation began last summer, when patrol officers raised concerns about Nelson’s handling of evidence. Police Chief Jon Diaz said he was informed of the allegations and ordered the investigation.

Metz said the officers that accused Nelson claimed he “seemed a little too interested” in drug evidence and that the allegations were “suspicious in nature, but there was enough for us to want to conduct what we call an integrity test.”

That test involved an undercover officer providing Nelson with a known quantity of narcotics to see if he would log them as evidence.

“Unfortunately, he did not do that,” Metz said.

Nelson was arrested and booked into the King County Jail early Thursday morning, and later taken home by Seattle police command officers. He was found on the John Wayne Trail later in the morning with what appeared to be a self-inflicted gunshot wound, authorities said. When medics reached the officer, "he had a pulse and was breathing," a representative of Eastside Fire and Rescue told Horne earlier in the day.

Chopper 7, sent to the area at about noon for a report of a person with a gunshot wound, shot video of sheriff's patrol cars and other emergency vehicles in the area near Rattlesnake Lake.

Nelson's case had not yet been referred to prosecutors at the time he was discovered injured, said Dan Donohoe of the King County Prosecutor's Office. Jail records show Nelson was booked into the jail at 4:16 a.m. and released at 4:48 a.m.

The Seattle Times reports Nelson joined the police department in 1990 and worked in patrol operations in the South Precinct.

Diaz was to discuss the arrest at a news  conference at noon on Thursday, but the news conference was postponed. Diaz said Thursday evening it was postponed because he was at Harborview earlier in the day.