COEUR d’ALENE — The husband of a woman shot and killed by Sandpoint Police told a jury Tuesday that he did not believe officers would resort to lethal force, while the officers involved testified that they had no choice but to open fire when she advanced on them while gripping a knife.

Shane Bruce Riley told a jury of four women and three men that his wife, Jeanetta, had been behaving strangely in the hours leading up to the deadly confrontation outside Bonner General Health in July 2014. The then-homeless couple was living in a Chevrolet Astro van at Shepherd Lake in Sagle when Jeanetta Riley, made cryptic statements about “not being able to make it through the night.” Shane Riley could also hear his wife fiddling with a disposable razor inside the van.

“Wherever she’s headed with this, it’s not good,” Shane Riley recalled from the witness stand in U.S. District Court.

Riley admitted he was scared for his wife and for himself. He also recognized that he needed to get help for his wife, which is why he drove his wife to the hospital. En route to the facility, Jeanetta Riley allegedly made remarks about stabbing people. Although alarmed by the comments, Shane Riley said he did not believe his wife intended on hurting anyone.

“She’s just a harm to herself,” Shane Riley told jurors.

Riley reported to a nurse that his wife was outside with a knife and threatening to harm others, which triggered a high-priority response by officers.

At worst, Shane Riley believed his wife would be jolted with a Taser in an encounter with law enforcement.

But within 10 seconds of officers arriving, she was shot three times by former Officer Michael Valenzuela and twice by Officer Skylar Ziegler.

Video footage captured by a camera in the front of Ziegler’s patrol vehicle showed Jeanetta Riley refusing officers’ commands to drop the knife in her right hand, yelling “no” and “bring it on.” When she steps off the curb and toward officers, shots ring out and Jeanetta Riley crumples onto Alder Street and the fillet knife clatters to the ground.

Shane Riley believed his wife had been felled by rubber bullets. He expressed regret for taking his wife to BGH for help and was in disbelief officers utilized lethal force.

“I trusted them. I trusted them to handle it,” Shane Riley told jurors.

A juror asked Riley why he did not take it upon himself to try and disarm his wife. He responded that he didn’t intervene because he feared doing so would worsen the situation.

But officers Valenzuela and Ziegler, in addition to former officer Garrett Johnson, testified that Jeanetta Riley’s refusal to heed repeated commands to drop the knife and stepping toward them hemmed them into a very narrow course of action.

“She didn’t comply to the most important command,” Johnson, now a Bonner County sheriff’s deputy, testified.

Although the department’s training manual counsels officers to consider backing down to de-escalate a situation, the three officers said told jurors that was not an option. Neither was attempting reason with her, they testified.

“In order to de-escalate, you have to be able to communicate with that person,” Valenzuela, now a deputy in Boundary County, told jurors.

Under cross-examination by Shane Riley’s attorney, Drew Dalton, jurors learned that the officers had not received training in crisis intervention when dealing with subjects in the throes of a mental health episode. However, the officers didn’t think such training would produce a different outcome given the circumstances.

The officers also testified they are specifically trained to target the center mass of an armed subject to neutralize the threat.

Ziegler briefly leveled a Taser at Jeanetta Riley during the confrontation, but told jurors that he did not deploy it because it is not designed to be fired on a forward-moving target.

Ziegler, now an SPD detective, testified that lethal force was the only course of action.

“I still believe to this day she was going to stab either me or Mike,” Ziegler told the jury.

Testimony in the civil suit against the officers and the city resumes today.

Keith Kinnaird can be reached by email at kkinnaird@bonnercountydailybee.com and follow him on Twitter @KeithDailyBee.