In his first report on a case involving the use of deadly force by police, newly appointed Inspector General Robert Devlin has concluded that a Naugatuck officer was justified when he shot three times at a suspected drug dealer who appeared to be about to run him over with a car while fleeing from arrest.

The police shooting took place on Sept. 14, 2020 at about 8 p.m. when 26-year old Roznovsky Machado of Waterbury allegedly crashed his car into a police cruiser and sped away from officers, one of whom had pulled him over after watching a suspected narcotics transaction. One of the two Naugatuck officers later involved in trying to arrest Machado was treated and released for minor injuries suffered from the collision. Machado, who escaped police, was not hit by any of the shots or otherwise injured.

The Machado shooting investigation and report is the first by Devlin, who was appointed in September to the new Inspector General position, an office created to investigate and prosecute all police use of deadly force cases and one of the most visible elements in a recently enacted package of legislative law enforcement reforms.

Devlin, 71, is a retired federal organized crime prosecutor, Superior Court Judge, Appellate Court Judge and judicial administrator. As he creates the new office and appoints staff, his actions have been closely followed by advocates of police reform who argue that the system that had been in place for years for investigating officer-involved-shootings was weighted in favor of police.

“This office is in the cross hairs of a lot of people with different sorts of ideas about how these cases should go,” Devlin said during a recent interview. “That is just the way it is. I’ve told everybody the same thing: I am just going to follow the evidence and that is going to determine the outcome. Sometimes that is easy. And sometimes it’s hard. But that is the objective. No thumb on the scales for or against anybody. Just straight ahead.”

Devlin’s annotated, 28-page report and lengthy appendix is based, among other things, on interviews with all parties to the shooting, an analysis of police body camera recordings and forensic examination of collision and gun shot evidence. The report concludes that the officer who fired the shots, Sgt. Nicholas Kehoss, reasonably “believed that he was facing death or serious physical injury,” that any other reasonable officer would have concurred and that shooting “was the only readily available feasible means to defend himself from the threat that he faced.”

According to Devlin’s report, the events leading to shots being fired began when Naugatuck detective Kevin Zainc, a member of a federal drug enforcement task force working a routine patrol for overtime, watched what he believed to be a hand-to-hand drug deal involving the driver of a new, bright orange Dodge Charger. Zainc recognized the driver and sole occupant of the Charger as Machado, who he suspected of being a drug dealer and who he knew to have a suspended driver’s license.

As Machado approached an on-ramp to Route 8 northbound, the report said Zainc turned on the lights on his police car and pulled Machado over. Zainc knew the Dodge was a rental car, but Machado was unable to produce a rental agreement or driver’s license. While Zainc spoke with Machado, who remained in the Dodge, Kehoss arrived to lend assistance, according to the report.

Kehoss parked his police car behind Zainc’s and when the two officers spoke, Zainc said he thought Machado was behaving nervously and was likely to try to speed off. Machado later admitted as much weeks later, when the Dodge was found abandoned in Waterbury and he was arrested and interviewed by state police detectives and recounted his conversation with Zainc.

“The guy was calm, ya know, he was cool, for the most part,” Machado said of Zainc. “He wasn’t disrespectful.”

Machado, who was alone in the Dodge, said he had been driving safely, observing all traffic laws and hadn’t been involved in an drug deals. He said Zainc told him to “sit tight” and walked back to talk to the arriving Kehoss. Machado said he heard Zainc say, “gonna run,” which he said was exactly what he was planning to do.

“I don’t know what made them think that I was gonna stay,” Machado told the state police detectives.

After speaking with his fellow officer, Kehoss said he decided to move his police car to a spot diagonally in front of the Dodge to prevent Machado from speeding off. As he prepared to move, Kehoss told the use of force investigators, “he could smell a strong odor of burned marijuana, which seemed to be coming from the Dodge, as there were no other vehicles stopped.”

“I positioned my vehicle so that my passenger side was approximately three feet from the front bumper of Machado’s front bumper,” Kehoss said, in a statement included in Devlin’s report. “I opened my driver’s door with intentions of assisting Detective Zainc with having Machado exit his vehicle. As I closed my driver’s-side door, I could hear Detective Zainc yelling “Don’t do it, don’t do it” which prompted me to unholster my department issued handgun.”

“I did not immediately know what was happening on the other side of my vehicle,” Kehoss said in the statement. “Machado could have been displaying a handgun, about to run on foot, or engaging Detective Zainc in an altercation. As I walked to the rear of my vehicle, to round the back of it and see what was happening, I heard tires screeching on the pavement.”

Machado told investigators that any second thoughts about fleeing ended when Kehoss tried to block the Dodge. During an earlier run-in with the law in Watertown, Machado said he had been blocked by police and was arrested for “a whole bunch of misdemeanors.”

“When he pulled up in front of me,” Machado said of Kehoss, “I was like, ‘Yeah, now I am really leaving.’ That’s when I wanted to run.”

Machado said he threw the Dodge into reverse and sped forward. The two police officer statements, footage from their body cameras and forensic analysis of collision damage and tire tracks indicate the Dodge crashed into Kehoss’s police car, which in turn struck him, bruising him, tearing his uniform and throwing him to the ground.

Machado denies hitting the police car. But he suggested in his statement he considered running over Kehoss. At the time, he said he was on his cellphone speaking to his sister, who he said is married to a police officer.

“I told my little sister, ‘I’m gonna take him.’,” Machado said in his statement. “She said, ‘Nah don’t, not police.’ My brother-in-law is a police officer.”

Kehoss said he fired at the Dodge because he was convinced it was speeding toward him after he was knocked to the ground by the collision.

“As this happened, I was looking right at the grill of the Dodge, which was coming right at me,” Kehoss said. “I believed I was about to be run over and killed by the fleeing vehicle. I fired one round from my handgun in the direction of Machado’s oncoming vehicle as I was falling backward and fired again while in a semi-seated position, bracing the impact of the pavement with my left arm and elbow and firing with my right hand. I do not recall how many rounds I fired. Once I felt the threat of the vehicle striking me had passed, I stopped firing. I believe I struck the windshield of the vehicle with at least one round.”

According to the report, a total of three shots penetrated the right side of the windshield, the right front door and the right rear passenger window. An examination of Kehoss’s body camera footage shows that the total elapsed time from when he climbed out his police car to when the Dodge sped by him while he is on the ground was six seconds.