The day after Officer Daniel Valencia and three other Spokane police officers shot and killed a man as he fled into his apartment, he texted one of the others, Officer Matthew Stewart. In the texts, the two strategized: They needed a shared story about why they shot Joshua Musselman to death on December 29, 2024.
They gamed it out.
“So what’s the crime we were investigating yesterday?” Valencia wrote to Stewart. “Unlawful discharge? Haha.”
“Hahahahahahaha,” Stewart replied. “Being a douche lol.”
Each officer involved — Valencia, Stewart, Garth Craigen and Will Mitchell — would have to write a report about their actions and what they saw that day, so it was important their stories matched. As members of one of the deadliest police agencies in the US, which had just gotten a new boss in the form of Chief Kevin Hall — who was then working hard to restore community faith in the department — the snipers needed to make it clear they had a good reason for killing Musselman.
“Right,” Valencia replied. “But for reals. For the report. What’s the crime at that point? Unlawful discharge or are we doing a welfare check? Lol. Cuz no one developed pc. Huh? Lol.”
Stewart: “I would say unlawful discharge at this point.”
“Pc” refers to probable cause, a legal standard established in the Fourth Amendment of the US Constitution requiring law enforcement officers to have a strong rationale to make an arrest, search a property or seek a warrant.
The cops, a SWAT team and a fleet of cruisers had responded that day to a 911 call from a neighbor who said Musselman had been firing a rifle into a nearby hill earlier in the afternoon. The four officers who shot Musselman had stationed themselves on the same hill about 120 feet northwest of Musselman’s apartment.
It was a bad day for Musselman, who witnesses said seemed to be having a mental health crisis and was making his neighbors feel unsafe.
According to official reports RANGE described last year, when the police got there, Musselman was standing on the landing outside his third-floor front door. He wasn’t even holding his rifle — he was rolling a joint.
As other police officers milled about in the parking lot below the apartment, Valencia, Stewart, Craigen and Mitchell watched Musselman from their hill for four minutes, according to the police reports written by Valencia and his colleagues. The documents said when Musselman finally saw them, he picked up what appeared to be a rifle. The snipers opened fire.
But Stewart’s texts dispute the idea that Musselman was getting ready to shoot. Stewart wrote in one of his messages sent a week after the shooting that Musselman was running “so it’s a moving target at 40 yards. Not the best.” He told Valencia this to console him because, Valencia texted, he was “really pissed off … that the two of us shot 10 rounds each and the fucker only got shot four times.”
Aside from what turned out to be an airsoft rifle, there were no other guns in the apartment.
Spokane County Prosecutor Preston McCollam ruled the killing justified in early September, in keeping with his office’s long-standing practice of exonerating law enforcement officers who kill civilians. McCollam, who was appointed to replace former prosecutor Larry Haskell last year and is seeking his first election to the office in November, did not return a request for comment.
‘Brothas for life now dogg’
The messages in which Valencia and Stewart strategized their reports were part of a longer string of texts that started one hour and 14 minutes after they’d killed Musselman. They were filed by Rondi Thorp, the attorney for Musselman’s family, which is suing the Spokane Police Department for the killing.
“Glad to have you next to me on a gun battle,” Valencia texted the day of the shooting, even though the officers had Musselman — who never fired his airsoft rifle while police were on the scene — dramatically outgunned with their AR-15 assault rifles. “Fuck yeah brotha. Felt a lot better when you came with me.”
Stewart: “Thanks homie. I’m glad you were there too! Makes me feel better.”
He told Stewart that the shooting had made them “Brothas for life now dogg,” according to the texts. “We’ll have to meet up and get a couple of beers now.”
Stewart described the damage the shots did to Musselman. “At least one hit him in the chest, on in the pelvic girdle, and one in the shin. There were probably more but he was all bloody.”
“I’m hoping that we hit him at least once each lol,” Valencia replied.
“I ended up shooting 6 rounds,” Stewart told Valencia.
Valencia replied, “I shot 4. I hope our rounds hit him. I think mine might have hit the rails. I’m a little worried about that. Lol.”
Stewart: “Bro me too.”
Screenshots of text messages between Spokane police officers Daniel Valencia and Matthew Stewart after they'd shot Joshua Musselman to death in 2024.
SPD spokesperson Tricia Leming said that because the messages are part of ongoing litigation, the department could not comment on them. She confirmed that each officer is still on active duty in the rank of officer.
In a separate chain of text messages that night between Valencia and Sergeant Jeremy McVay, who was not involved in Musselman’s killing, Valencia said that he was "pissed" that some of the snipers’ rounds went into the apartment next door to Musselman’s.
That’s where Alexis Stojsic and a friend had been hiding from the gunfire. Stojsic’s toddler son was not in the apartment.
“A little kid and two females live there,” Valencia wrote. “Hopefully none of mine or stews [presumably Stewart’s] rounds” entered Stojsic’s apartment, he added.
“Yeah that sucks,” said McVay, a SWAT team member who Hall awarded a Medal of Valor in May of last year. He consoled Valencia. “Don’t beat yourself up.”
McVay asked Valencia if he’d made it home or was he “still being processed.”
“Just got home,” said Valencia, who’d previously shot another Spokane man in 2022. “It wasn’t too bad this time.”
The messages suggest the two men and another friend drank beer that same night in a garage. Valencia, who was placed on administrative leave along with Musselman’s other killers after the incident, said in the messages that being benched would allow him to “get my liver ready for the Colombia trip at the end of January,” apparently a vacation he’d been planning.
“Don’t tell them about your vacation they will fuck you on admin days :),” McVay replied, presumably referring to administrative leave.
At 1:38 am the following morning, McVay texted a screenshot of an interview Chief Hall had apparently given about the shooting.
“Our new chief is a pussy,” McVay said.
Valencia: “Saw his interview. What a poos.”
Wrapping the conversation up, Valencia described Musselman’s gun: “I guess it was a bb rifle. Lol.”
McVay: “Oh shit!!! Doesn’t matter.”
Screenshots of text messages between Spokane police Officer Daniel Valencia and Sergeant Matthew Stewart after Valencia and three other officers shot Joshua Musselman to death in 2024.
