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.

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.”

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.