Media Finally Reports Key Details of Mark Capps Killing

Eight months after Saving Country Music initially reported that a Tennessee Bureau of Investigation (TBI) Officer was in the house when Grammy-winning engineer Mark Capps allegedly kidnapped his family and threatened to kill them, the Associated Press has finally reported on the matter among a rash of other reports that have surfaced in Nashville news outlets.
Unfortunately for the friends and family of Mark Capps who were hoping for the media to step up and correct the mischaracterizations of the Metro Nashville Police and the initial media reports, it may be too little too late. Not only has Davidson County District Attorney Glenn Funk already decided to not bring charges in the matter against the members of law enforcement involved, it appears Metro Nashville has washed their hands of the matter as well with an Office of Professional Accountability report recommending no disciplinary action against any of the officers involved.
Mark Capps was killed by a Nashville SWAT Officer while serving warrants for his arrest on January 5th, 2023. Three SWAT Officers were ordered to the front porch of the Mark Capps house to place an explosive device on the front door. When Capps came to the door—allegedly with a revolver in his hand—SWAT officer Ashley Kendall Coon fired four times at Capps.
After the first shot was fired, the front door of the house closed. Despite not being able to see Capps in order to determine if he remained a threat, Coon kept firing, shooting Capps three times through the closed door, ultimately killing Capps. Along with the bullets, fragments of the door were found in Mark during the autopsy. Body camera footage from the officers leave it inconclusive if Mark had a gun, or if he pointed it toward officers. Whether Capps had a gun or not, he was clearly retreating when he was shot.
In a press conference held on the day of the shooting, Metro Nashville Public Affairs Director Don Aaron stated that Mark Capps had kidnapped his wife and stepdaughter at gunpoint and held them against their will. The media ran with this story and have been reporting it verbatim every since, including when the autopsy report for Capps was released, and when District Attorney Glenn Funk closed the investigation with no charges on May 23rd.
But the whole time there was a third person in the house with Mark Capps. Zachary Noah Silva is an officer for the TBI, and was staying in the house that night. He was the boyfriend of Mark’s stepdaughter. Not only was Silva in the house, he was there with his sidearm, badge, and uniform. Despite police characterizing the incident as an active kidnapping, Noah Silva was able to leave during the incident, and when he did so, felt no need to report the incident to either Nashville Metro Police, or to the TBI when he arrived at work.
In a new report published by the AP and subsequently rebroadcast in scores of other AP media outlets titled “Investigation shows armed officer was hostage at home of Grammy winner who was killed by police,” it states:
Newly released investigative files in the police shooting death of a Grammy-winning sound engineer reveal there was an armed Tennessee Bureau of Investigation officer in the home when Mark Capps began threatening his family with guns Jan. 5.
The officer, Zachery Silva, was the boyfriend of Mark Capps’ stepdaughter, McKenzie Acuff, according to the records. Silva told investigators he attempted to de-escalate the situation, eventually leaving the house around 5:30 a.m. after Mark Capps put down the weapons and returned to his bedroom. When Mark Capps, 54, fell asleep several hours later, and Acuff and her mother Tara Capps, Mark Capps’ wife, were able to leave the house and file a police report. Police later shot and killed Mark Capps when he pointed a gun at an officer after they tried to arrest him at his home.
But despite the AP story characterizing that it was the release of TBI files that revealed Noah Silva’s presence in the home during the alleged hostage situation, Saving Country Music was able to verify this information and published it all the way back on January 18th—13 days after Mark Capps was killed.
Despite Metro Nashville not mentioning Noah Silva in both a press conference and a critical incident report published the same day as the Capps killing, Noah Silva’s presence was revealed in the original arrest warrants issued by Metro Nashville Police, and available to the public as soon as Mark Capps was declared deceased. Saving Country Music then verified Noah Silva’s employment for the TBI with both the Public Affairs Office of the Metro Nashville Police Department, as well as the TBI itself.
Furthermore, the TBI’s 176-page investigation report into the killing of Mark Capps was not “newly released.” The report was published on the Davidson County District Attorney’s website by July 28th—over six weeks ago. After spending additional time to obtain the full body camera footage from the officers involved in the killing via the TBI, Saving Country Music posted its own extensive report on the Mark Capps killing and investigation on August 22nd, or three weeks ago.
Additionally, the title of the AP report characterizes TBI Officer Noah Silva as a “hostage” in the incident that led up to the SWAT raid. But reading Noah Silva’s account from the TBI report, along with the audio transcript taken from a video that Mark’s stepdaughter took during the altercation, it reveals that Silva was never held at gunpoint by Capps.
Instead, Noah Silva refused to come downstairs until Capps unloaded one of his guns. Silva was then able to de-escalate the situation by talking to Capps. That is how Silva was able to leave for work at the TBI at 5 am. The stepdaughter then returned to bed, and Mark and his wife Tara also returned to bed.
The reason Noah Silva did not call police when he left the house to alert them to an active hostage situation was because there wasn’t one. Silva also says in the report that after he left, he kept in constant contact with the stepdaughter to make sure the incident didn’t not get out of control again and he would need to call the police. If the hostage situation had been ongoing, Silva would have a duty a sworn as an officer to report it.
This all undercuts the characterizations of the Metro Nashville Police, who said the hostage situation was active the entire time. They did not even mention that Noah Silva was in the house, perhaps because it refutes Metro Nashville’s entire characterization of the incident that led to one of their officers killing Mark Capps in the entry way of his own home. Capps never fired a shot, nor physically harmed anyone, and had no prior criminal record.
What the story from the Associated Press on the Mark Capps killing gets right is leading with how incredible and significant the revelation is that a TBI Officer was in the house during the alleged kidnapping. The shocking nature of that revelation is only possible because the Metro Nashville Police Department excluded that information from the public in both their pronouncements on the incident.
After a few Nashville-based media outlets reported on the 176-page TBI report earlier this week, many others outlets did as well, especially after the AP story was released on September 12th. This includes WKRN News Channel 2, whose Tori Gessner falsely reports the facts of the case. Along with the WKRN studio anchor saying that police tried to “save” a warrant on Capps, and that “skaters” said he held his wife and stepdaughter hostage—still not mentioning the presence of Noah Silva—Gessner says that the TBI obtained information for the report from video cameras inside the home.
This reporting from WKRN is completely incorrect. The TBI report clearly states that the video cameras in the home were not working at the time and did not record the incident. Instead, the information in the report was taken from the testimony of the witnesses, as well as audio from videos the stepdaughter took with her phone. The phone did not capture the scenes of the incident, but did capture audio at different times during the altercation.
The extended delay in reporting on what should have been a critical local story of the fatal killing of a member of the music community by police, as well as the continued misunderstandings of the circumstances presented in the TBI report has made the Mark Capps killing not just a policing story, but a media story in how and why so many outlets dropped the ball.
The Tennessean also issued a report (paywalled) earlier this week based the 176-page TBI report. But along with not saying much critical of the Metro Nashville Police in the report, The Tennessean refused to address the numerous concerns about the killing when they spoke to Metro Nashville Police Chief John Drake about the incident on March 15th, including not bringing up Noah Silva’s presence in the Mark Capps home.
Most importantly though, now that the media in Nashville has finally been made aware that a TBI Officer was in the home and chose not to act during the alleged kidnapping—or to report on the incident when he left the home—the next thing that deserved to be scrutinized is why the TBI was put in charge of investigating the Mark Capps killing when it involved one of their own, presenting a clear conflict of interest. The reason the TBI is charged with investigating any police-involved shooting by Metro Nashville Police is to eliminate any conflicts of interest. But in this case, the TBI had a conflict of interest as well.
The 176-page TBI Report verifies that the TBI was not in a position to impartially investigate what happened that night. The United States Justice Department, or perhaps a special investigator assigned by the Governor would be the only impartial body to investigate the matter objectively. And since a good case can be made that the civil rights of Mark Capps were violated, a Justice Department inquiry similar to the ones we’ve seen in other police-involved killings seems necessary.
Saving Country Music has also learned that the widow of Mark Capps is seeking a civil lawsuit against Metro Nashville Police.
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The Backstory
With scores of credits to his name from working with artists such as Dolly Parton, The Oak Ridge Boys, Ronnie Milsap, The Isaacs, and many others, 54-year-old Mark Capps was well-known and beloved throughout the country music community, and had no previous criminal record or history of arrests. Mark Capps also came from a prominent country music family. He was the son of Grand Ole Opry legend and Musicians Hall of Fame member Jimmy Capps, also known as “The Man In Back.”
Mark’s brother Jeffery Allen Capps passed away two days prior to the incident. On December 15th, 2022, Becky Isaacs of the country Gospel band The Isaacs was hit head-on in a two car collision in Hendersonville, Tennessee, and hospitalized. Capps was close to Becky Isaacs, and she was severely injured in the accident. This also resulted in the Isaacs having to cancel numerous tour dates, which put Mark Capps out of work right around the Holidays and raised his concerns about money.
All of this led to January 5th. Still distraught over the death of his brother, Mark Capps was heavily medicated and drinking alcohol. When his wife Tara came home and saw Capps drinking, she took the beer from him, which helped initiate the altercation. The TBI report makes it clear that Mark Capps did at one point verbally threaten to kill his wife, stepdaughter, Noah Silva, the family dogs, and the police if they were called, and did point a gun at the family’s dogs at one point.
Tara Capps wanted her husband removed from the home since he was clearly experiencing a mental health crisis, but she claims she never wanted him killed. As the Associated Press report states, “Nashville has a project called Partners in Care that teams counselors from the city’s Mental Health Cooperative with officers to respond to mental health emergencies where there is a gun or other danger present. Instead, members of the Metro Nashville Police Special Response Tactical team returned to the Capps’ home around 2 p.m.”
This was the fatal mistake made by Metro Nashville Police, along with ordering SWAT officers to the front door to place the explosive device as opposed to opening a line of communication with Capps. This decision also put the SWAT officers at risk. The Partners In Care program was launched in 2021, with one of the pilot programs based in the Hermitage precinct where Mark’s wife and stepdaughter went after the incident.
Despite sources inside Metro Nashville telling Saving Country Music that the captain over the Special Operations Division (SOD), SWAT, the Special Response Team (SRT), and Aviation named Greg Davis was moved to the Parks Department because of the incident, the Metro Nashville Police Department has yet to publicly acknowledge any wrongdoing whatsoever in the Mark Capps matter, have handed out no disciplinary action, nor have they acknowledged any moves to make sure a similar situation doesn’t occur again in the future.
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The group “Friends of Mark Capps” launched a petition seeking justice for Capps.
September 14, 2023 @ 9:17 am
Hands down an egregious cover up by the MNPD & the TBI.
Capps had severe issues, to be sure.
Face timing with friends while putting a gun to his own head, etc., etc.
Face timing with friends, showing them all the guns he had laid out, etc.
But that doesn’t excuse murder by cop, at a local and state level, in this case.
September 14, 2023 @ 10:39 am
So Capps wife escapes, goes to the police to file a report, and is now suing said police. Something just seems off here, and has since the beginning. Solely gut instinct, but there is something missing. An illogical string of events.
September 14, 2023 @ 12:14 pm
I did not want to comment about this. Especially not before a few more comments have been posted. But yes, I have been confused by the mentality of his wife at all steps. If allegedly the situation cools down and everyone hugs it out and goes back to sleep, why would she go to police instead of using Google to find a therapist? Why disclose the entirety of the situation to engender this kind of reaction from the authorities? Surely she could have fudged some of the details if she was really trying to get a social worker to talk to him.
Plus, in 2023 With all the media buzz around civilian and police interactions, what would have possessed her to do this in the first place? Surely she had to have known that something like this was a possibility given how the police have been handling these situations
And where was she while this whole proceeding was taking place? Did they hold her for questioning while they executed Mark by police? Was she completely unaware that they dispatched this amount of force? Do you think she was watching this happen?
I’d be lying if I said that I haven’t entertained the notion that this was a case of homicide by cop from someone who stands to gain from his life insurance.
September 15, 2023 @ 6:44 am
If the homicide by cop theory is wrong, she is potentially a victim in this incident and would explain suing the police.
But the theory may not be so far-fetched. If you consider that there was a person present who could have coached her in what to say to the police… an off-duty cop who went to work and did not report the incident or tell anyone that he had been there.
September 15, 2023 @ 12:02 pm
Clearly his mental state wasn’t good at the time. If he was threatening suicide – usually a suicide nullifies a life insurance payout. If there was no hostage situation or that situation had defused, she may have feared a suicide more than her own safety.
September 14, 2023 @ 12:27 pm
@wayne–
It’s a recurring thing in domestic situations that a family member calls the police because a person is out of control or even violent, due to a mental illness episode–and because they need help in calming the person down. Then the police come and they shoot the person, sometimes within seconds of arriving.
Capps’ wife probably went to the police to get help for herself and for Mark. One can’t blame her for being upset that they came and shot him dead upon arrival, though that doesn’t necessarily mean that she should win her lawsuit.
September 15, 2023 @ 7:05 am
Thanks, Fuzzy! You put it better than I was attempting!
September 14, 2023 @ 10:52 am
The SWAT team response seemed designed to end in the shooting death of Capps. Once Officer Kendall Coon started screaming like a banshee at Capps, “SHOW US YOUR HANDS!!,” it was as good as over. There was nothing that Capps could have done to ramain alive. Any movement of his hands, at that point would simply be a “trigger” for Coon to shoot him, and would be ruled a justification for the shooting by the investigators after the fact.
If they had wanted to resolve the situation peacefully, the officers would have made contact with Capps over the telephone and negotiated his surrender or waited to arrest him when he stepped out of his house. But Coons & Co. were not looking to end it peacefully. They were looking to end it NOW.
September 14, 2023 @ 2:20 pm
as in every aspect of humanity there are good cops and shithead cops. you can back the blue and back de-funding buffoons putting together some roscoe p coltrane SWAT team larping with mil weapons and more likely to shoot each other in the ass than actually do something life saving.
hold shithead bully cops accountable and it will go a long way to closing down the anti cop idiots and increasing public trust.
anyone out there experiencing a mental health crisis or having a family member in mental distress think twice before calling the cops. best case your dog will end up shot, worst case varying amounts of family will end up ventilated
September 14, 2023 @ 3:23 pm
More layers instead of fewer …
Trig, your efforts are great, but have you ever thought of scaling up and getting help? Surely there are a few real journalists left, though they might be living off the grid in Bolivia.
September 14, 2023 @ 3:34 pm
I have thought about writing a distilled version of this story for other outlets and submitting it to them. But each time I try to work on that, another development comes in. I have no clue why the media in Nashville did not report on this six weeks ago when the TBI report was issued on the case, or 8 months ago when it was revealed the TBI Officer was in the house, and even less clue of why they reported on it now. But I’ve heard from a few folks that think my reporting finally broke through. A lot of people are reading these reports, but really this is something that folks in Nashville specifically need to get interested in. At the same time, I’m stupefied why this isn’t more of a national story. All I know to do is to keep reporting on it and try to get as close to the truth as we can with the information we have.
September 14, 2023 @ 6:50 pm
“I’m stupefied why this isn’t more of a national story.”
I was thinking about this too, i think it’s because of how complex the situation is (and probably bc the PD doesn’t want it coming out). There were so many factors at play and so much new information brought to light, the details of the case can’t be distilled into a headline, or even a few paragraphs, which means journalists won’t bother writing it because people won’t read it. Idk it’s sad it falls to a website called “saving country music” to do actual journalism to shed light on what was clearly an unjust death and a fatal error by the law. That’s what my dumb ass thinks at least. I hope you can get more coverage of this for the sake of the family.
September 18, 2023 @ 3:14 am
It isn’t a national story because the age, race, gender and economic class of the victim aren’t such that they can get a lot of clicks or easily work it into a preexisting narrative. There’s not a lot of sympathy for well-off older white men out there. And if his substance abuse problems and mental health issues were reported there would be plenty of people blaming him for his own death. And not just the conservatives. Just like the liberals reveal their class bigotry when they sneer at Trump supporters as “trailer trash” I’m sure some would be willing to use arguments they normally fight against just to twist the knife in someone they presume was one of the bad guys.
Not that there’s not a large element of truth in the idea that wealthy older white men control America and always have. It’s a spectrum, not an elite Illuminati club. And it is real. But if even people who are supposed to be under the protection of white privilege can be murdered in their own homes by agents of the law without any consequences what does that say about the police state?
September 14, 2023 @ 3:55 pm
The originally released, edited, portion of Officer Coon’s body cam footage available since 1/5/23 has completely in sync audio and visuals. However, in the full footage made publicly available only recently, the audio and visuals are badly out of sync. Specifically, the visuals lag behind the audio. I didn’t give it much thought at the time, as I was more focused on the portions of the video I had not yet seen. In recently re-reading Officer Coon’s version of what transpired before he decided to pull the trigger, a very good reason for the, initially seemingly innocuous, audio and visual desynchronization became very apparent. His account does not correspond with the real-time footage.
Officer Coon asserts in his interview that as soon as he realized the door was beginning to open, “…his natural response was to yell commands, and he yelled ‘Show me your hands’.
Even if this were true, keep in mind this is a highly trained SWAT officer. His “natural response” should have been to execute the contingency plan specifically formulated in the, very likely, event that they were discovered by the suspect during their operation.
Examining the video, in reality, Officer Coon does not even begin to speak until the door is very nearly completely open. This is extremely important. Mark had enough time to almost fully open his door BEFORE the police even began to verbally address him at all. Well after the footage hits 1:54 does the door even begin to open. Just after 1:56 Mark is shot. The first command to “Show me your hands does not occur until AFTER the timer hits 1:55. That is about one second from beginning to enunciate to shooting. Officer Coon had already shot Mark twice BEFORE the timer reaches 1:57.
Remember, Coon claims he yelled “Show me your hands” as soon as he saw the door begin to open, but before the door was opened and before he actually saw Mark holding a gun. This is key. By Coon’s own admission, he could not see Mark at all when he issued his command to see Mark’s hands. An impossible command to obey. If Mark even understood what was said – there was a closed storm door between them, and Officer Coon himself asserts that the inner door was majoritively closed when the first order was issued.
Officer Coon’s interview continues, “He said the door came open and from that moment Coon saw the handgun and it was pointed directly at him and the other two officers. Coon said he could not see the suspect’s left hand, and he again yelled ‘Show me your hands.’ Coon said he realized at that point that the suspect saw him and his partners, was not complying with commands…”
The video tells another story. Officer Coon’s claim that he issued two commands to Mark, and then, and only then, fired because Mark did not comply with them, is a blatant falsehood. Officer Coon began firing his rifle into Mr. Capps BEFORE he even finished uttering his second command. “Show me your…” Bang Bang Bang Bang. It is impossible and criminal to not only give someone literally no time to comply with a command before killing him, it is equally impossible and criminal to kill someone for not complying with a command before that command has even fully come out of your mouth.
September 14, 2023 @ 4:18 pm
Original 1/5/23 synchronized body cam footage video.
https://youtu.be/yQbwJS3xlwE?si=EUNHt1b51ujK13YH
September 14, 2023 @ 5:41 pm
“It is impossible and criminal to not only give someone literally no time to comply with a command before killing him, it is equally impossible and criminal to kill someone for not complying with a command before that command has even fully come out of your mouth.”
@coat– Sgt. Coon’s answer to that is that he didn’t shoot Capps for not complying with his command. It’s that he shot Capps for lifting and aiming a gun at him, causing Coon to have imminent/instantaneous fear for his life. Anybody–police officer or civilian–has the right to shoot someone who you reasonably believe is trying to criminally shoot you.
The prosecutor, evidently, accepted Coon’s explanation, and for that reason, is not charging him.
September 14, 2023 @ 7:28 pm
“ Sgt. Coon’s answer to that is that he didn’t shoot Capps for not complying with his command.”
Officer Coon said he had already seen the handgun pointed at them, yet, instead of firing immediately, he issued a second command of “Show me your hands”. Officer Coon told TBI investigators, “… he realized at that point the suspect saw him and his partners, was not complying with commands, and the gun never changed positions.”
“ Anybody–police officer or civilian–has the right to shoot someone who you reasonably believe is trying to criminally shoot you.”
It was a Mexican standoff at best, but the video shows Coon shooting Mark as soon has he attempted to close his door on them, so, at worst, Coon shot Mark for not obeying his commands and attempting to retreat into the domicile. No, I take that back. At worst Coon shot Capps because he had already been informed by his superiors that Mark would kill them if they showed up to his house. (TBI Report acknowledges they had been told this before being sent in). Metro Police Spokesman Don Aaron initially claimed that after Coon yelled at Capp’s to show his hands Capp’s,“movements posed an immediate, imminent threat, and fired”, but Coon himself said Capps made no movements at all. Either way, they had snuck into his house without announcing their presence, purpose, or authority and had a rifle pointed at him the entire time. His pointing a pistol at them as a consequence of these decisions does not seem particularly unreasonable in my estimation. Perhaps police tactics, in retrospect, were equally unreasonable and unwise. According to the interviews, Capps didn’t lift and then aim the handgun, it was in a static hip retention position the entire time.
After he shot Mark, Coon states, “Capps began to fall back and at the same time the door began to close as he fell.” I don’t see evidence to support that statement in the body cam footage. Officer Coon’s shouldering of his weapon, while simultaneously disengaging the safety mechanism and stepping to the left, coincides exactly with the door beginning to close. One on target before the door closes, two on target through the door, one through the door missing Mark after he fell.
September 14, 2023 @ 7:51 pm
God dang. I’ve been a fan of independent journalism for years but still retained a shred of respect for the AP. Now I just feel ignorant because I saw with my own eyes how a singular self trainee journalist is able to keep facts straight unlike the AP.
What happened to Mark was a damn shame. Police too often escalate and don’t serve.
September 15, 2023 @ 4:48 am
As media turn more to AI, which has no feeling or motive, there will be fewer people in media to care about incidents like this. That is, fewer journalists.
Expect more deafening silences.
But that’s “progress.”
*spit*
September 15, 2023 @ 10:21 am
Where does this go from here?
Is it a shut case now as far as far as the authority is concerned?
September 15, 2023 @ 10:31 am
The next shoe to fall would be a potential civil case against Metro Nashville Police from Mark’s family. The only other option would be a Justice Department inquiry. I don’t know that anyone needs to be charged with murder here, but it seems quite curious that there wasn’t even any disciplinary action after the incident when so many clear mistakes were made.
September 15, 2023 @ 11:40 am
Not sure what the relationship status currently is between Noah and McKenzie, but he knew Mark had committed multiple felonies and did not call for backup or arrest him – which he was absolutely legally required to do as a Tennessee police officer. His lack of action during the commission of the crime, and then leaving the crime scene, both of which were literally illegal and thus criminal, directly contributed to Mark’s fate at the hands of Metro SWAT mere hours later. Civil suit, if nothing else.
September 20, 2023 @ 7:30 pm
Unfortunately no matter what, nothing can bring Mark back. I just hope justice will one day be served and that his name will be cleared. He was a good man that was in a mist of a mental breakdown and no one was helping him. When Mark came out of the bedroom without the guns and Noah checked his waistband to make sure he didn’t have them, why didn’t he take that moment to subdue him? This whole situation stinks from the beginning. District Attorney Glen Funk should have called in the Justice Department to do an independent investigation once he found out that a member of the TBI was involved. This is nothing more than a cover up to the fact that police procedures were not followed and a man died as a result of that fact. Thank you Trigger for doing all the investigation work you have. At least someone was willing to try and fight for Mark.