Wife of Slain Country Engineer Mark Capps Files Lawsuit Against Police

The wife of Grammy-winning country engineer Mark Capps has filed a federal civil rights lawsuit against the Metro Nashville Police Department and SWAT Officer Ashley Kendall Coon stemming from the killing of Mark Capps on January 5th. Acting on the behalf of the Mark Capps estate, Capps’ widow Tara Capps is seeking nominal, compensatory and punitive damages in the case.
Mark Capps was shot and killed through the closed door of his home in the Hermitage neighborhood of Nashville after his wife and stepdaughter fled to the Hermitage police precinct, claiming that Mark Capps had kidnapped them and threatened them at gunpoint. Capps was under mental duress at the time after the death of his brother two days prior, and was also heavily medicated and intoxicated.
However, as Saving Country Music has reported since January, there was also an off-duty officer for the Tennessee Bureau of Investigation (TBI) named Noah Silva who was also in the house at the time of the incident. Silva was the boyfriend of Mark’s stepdaughter, and was able to leave the house during the alleged kidnapping. After he left, he did not feel compelled to alert authorities to the incident. According to a TBI investigation, there had been a de-escalation prior to him leaving the residence.
The lawsuit alleges that even though Tara Capps sought the assistance of the police, she did not want her husband put in danger or killed, and the MNPD escalated the situation by employing the SWAT team as opposed to treating the incident as a mental health emergency through the department’s Partners in Care program, or through their Domestic Violence protocols.
The lawsuit also claims that police made no effort to contact Mark Capps through his cell phone and negotiate with him before sending SWAT officers to the property, and instead deciding to treat him as a barricaded suspect despite undercover officers at the property observing Capps leaving the house unarmed on multiple occasions before SWAT arrived.
The lawsuit states:
MNPD dispatched a 13-officer “SWAT” team to serve the warrants on Capps at home. Although Hermitage Precinct was one of the original Partners in Care pilot precincts, and its program had been operational for well over a year, MNPD did not involve Partners in Care in the warrant service attempt. Rather, the team included SWAT units under the premise that Capps was to be treated as a “barricaded” suspect, even though Capps was not actually barricaded.
Even though MNPD had Capps’ cell phone number, MNPD SWAT Sgt. Jonathan Frost decided that rather than attempt to call Capps to talk it out, the two SWAT teams would begin the operation by setting breaching charges on both the front and back doors. Ostensibly, MNPD’s plan was for the two SWAT teams to withdraw to cover after setting the breaching charges and then attempt to talk to Capps. However, the SWAT team would end up killing Capps without ever attempting dialogue.In the meantime, MNPD had already put undercover surveillance officers in place outside the Capps home. Over the course of the next few hours these officers reported that Capps was home, his car was in the driveway, and they observed him walk outside unarmed to both the front driveway and back porch before returning to the house.
The lawsuit also disputes the characterization of the Metro Nashville Police Department that Mark Capps pointed a gun at officers when he came to the door while SWAT officers were installing the breaching charges, or that he even had a gun on his person at the time.
At the time [Ashley] Coon began firing, only two seconds had elapsed since the door had first opened. On information and behalf, Capps was not pointing a gun at them or taking any other action that posed an imminent threat of harm. Coon hit Capps with three out of four shots, all of which struck Capps in the chest. Capps’s door swung closed as Capps collapsed on the floor, his head falling toward the right while his feet landed on the left.
The officers entered Capps’s home, finding Capps lying on the floor. Coon headed immediately to an adjoining office that was adjacent to the Capps’s entryway, without stopping to inspect or secure Capps. The SWAT members tied Capps’s hands and dragged him out of the house. The SWAT officers did not find a gun [in] Capps’s hands, in his clothing, or on his body, and said absolutely nothing about a gun while they were restraining and moving him. The only gun found near Capps, a pistol, was tucked halfway under a rug on the other side of the entryway from him, several feet away.
As Saving Country Music has also reported from the 175-page TBI Report about the killing of Mark Capps released in August, the two other SWAT officers involved in the killing—Timothy Brewer and Jason Rader—said they did not see a gun when they initially entered the house, zip-tied Mark as he lay dying or dead, and moved his body outside.
The photo of the gun supplied by Nashville police has also led to questions of how the weapon could end up in the attitude in which it was found (under a rug and a parcel) if only moments before it had been in Mark’s hand, pointed at officers. What was found on the person of Mark Capps was a black iPhone.

The lawsuit also questions why Officer Coon and the other officers shouted “Show Me Your Hands” in the body cam footage if they saw that Mark Capps already had a weapon. In that case, they should have yelled “Drop the weapon” instead.
The lawsuit states:
The teammates all claimed in their TBI interviews that Capps had been pointing a gun directly at them when Coon shot him, and that Capps had refused to put the gun down. However, none of the footage from the team’s Body cameras corroborated their claim. Coon actually went so far as to claim that he could see Capps’s finger on the trigger. To explain away the fact that he shouted, “Show me your hands” when Capps was supposedly pointing a gun at his team, Coon claimed that he said it was just his “natural response.”
On information and belief, the SWAT team concocted this story after the fact in order to justify having killed Mark Capps. Based on the claim that Capps was pointing a gun at the SWAT team when Coon shot him, the District Attorney’s Office declined to seek prosecution in the case.
The lawsuit also points out how the Metro Nashville’s Office of Professional Accountability rubber stamped the TBI’s investigation as opposed to conducting their own.
Pursuant to the 2017 Memorandum of Understanding between MNPD and the TBI, MNPD retained the right to conduct its own interviews of its officers in order to effectuate MNPD’s internal use of force review and administrative investigation. However, MNPD instead found that the Capps shooting was justified without conducting any of its own interviews of its employees.
There is currently no trial date set for the matter. Tara Capps is being represented by Relentless Advocacy of Nashville, and Moseley & Moseley of Murfreesboro.
In lieu of any disciplinary action or even acknowledgement of potential mistakes made by Metro Nashville Police in the incident, the new lawsuit is the only hope family and friends of Mark Capps have to find justice for the 54-year-old. A trial might also be the only way the public can find answers as to why someone in the midst of a mental health crisis with no prior criminal background was gunned down in the entryway of his own home.
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, Mark Capps was well-known and beloved throughout the country music community. 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, known as “The Man In Back.”
More information from Saving Country Music’s continuing investigation into the killing of Mark Capps when it comes available.
October 30, 2023 @ 7:24 pm
I am not a “defend the blue no matter who” person but the cops received information that Capps was holding his family at gun point and entered the situation with that potential lethality in mind. So why would the cops treat this like an unarmed domestic violence call? The police have some liberty to overreact when they have reason to believe a weapon is present and may be used against them. If the situation was misrepresented to the police it seems to be on the wife and the whole thing seems weird that she is suing the police after the fact.
October 30, 2023 @ 8:12 pm
@Strait–You’re little imprecise in how you phrased that:
“but the cops received information that Capps was holding his family at gun point”
Based on Trig’s multiple articles, it seems the cops received information that Capps HAD BEEN holding his family at gunpoint, but that eveybody left and that he was then all alone in the house by himself.
Suppose when the wife went to the police she told them something like this:
“I have a big problem at my home. My husband is acting very erratic. He’s taking medications, he’s not thinking straight; this morning , we were home wiith my daughter and her boyfriend–who’s a police officer with your department. My husband started waving his gun around and saying crazy things about harming us and himself. The officer left the house. Then, when my husband dozed off, my daughter and I both left. I really can’t go back there with my husband in the condition that he’s in and behaving the way he’s behaving. Can you have some officers go over there and get him some help and take his guns away.?”
Then the SWAT team went over thereand Officer Coon started screaming out commands and opened fire with an assault weapon and shot Capps dead the second that he saw him.
I’m not saying that Officer Coon was necessarily in the wrong. But does it really seem weird that under these circumstances Capps’ wife would be suing the police? Actually, it’s not weird at all. The fact pattern–Family call police because a family member is disturbed and unruly and family need help; police arrive and shoot and kill the disturbed person; family file a lawsuit– occurs quite frequently.
October 30, 2023 @ 8:36 pm
Nah they should have known that he was a “beloved” man in the community” who was having a “mental health emergency” because his brother died. If only they’d sent in the guidance counselors.
October 30, 2023 @ 9:58 pm
Not sure why they would have sent guidance counselors unless Mr. Capps was planning to enroll in MTSU and he wanted to see if his AP credits from high school were still good. II haven’t seen anything like that associated with this case.
However, they could have sent professionals from the Metro Nashville Police Department’s Partners in Care program that was launched at the very precinct that the plaintiff in this lawsuit went to in an attempt to deal with her husband who was clearly in the midst of a mental health crisis, and that has also been implemented in cases very similar to Mark’s, and successfully.
Instead, they chose to send the SWAT team, believing that three men in full tactical gear hanging out on Mark’s porch in broad daylight while multiple other men sawed away parts of his backyard fence and approached his back door would not be noticed whatsoever. That decision ultimately put the lives of all of those SWAT officers at potential risk, along with the life of Mark Capps at risk (who ultimately died), and also put the department and one of its officers in legal jeopardy which has now come to fruition through this lawsuit.
I feel bad for everyone involved in this situation. It was totally unnecessary.
October 30, 2023 @ 8:18 pm
“The right of the people to be secure in their persons, houses… against unreasonable… seizures, shall not be violated…”
Having a warrant to arrest does not negate the opening statement and requirements of the Fourth Amendment. The arrest warrant must be served in a reasonable manner, otherwise it is a clear violation of civil rights. Two separate teams of heavily armored and armed police officers simultaneously snuck onto Mr. Capps property, and then legally (via Curtilage law) into his home without announcing their presence, purpose, or authority – and then shot him dead two seconds after he discovered their presence; which they were actively attempting to conceal. Even worse, these police officers, by their own admission, were not even planning on making any attempt to serve the arrest warrant once they were actively within Mr. Capp’s home; only plant explosive devices, and then secretly creep away. Mr. Capps was never informed that there were multiple armed individuals on his property, legally within his home, never informed that any of these men were police, never informed he had warrants out for his arrest, never informed he was under arrest, never informed he would be shot and killed (in his own house) one and a half seconds after some stranger said, “Show me your hands. Show me your… bang, bang bang, bang.”
Anyone remember that Bill Hicks bit, “You all saw him, he had a gun.”
October 31, 2023 @ 5:25 am
They used to be called “peace officers.” Now they’re called “law enforcement.” That should tell you all you need to know
October 31, 2023 @ 10:30 am
Back when women handled their own domestic disputes? And it wasn’t called a dispute, it was called her being wrong?
November 1, 2023 @ 7:20 am
Are you on the rag again?
November 1, 2023 @ 7:40 am
Let’s not do this please.
October 31, 2023 @ 7:02 am
Hey,Jake,wonder how Capps would have been remembered were he black ?
October 31, 2023 @ 10:41 am
My career in bridges and roadwork, has me often talking to off duty cops we hire to direct traffic on our projects. I’ve met SWAT guys over the years and hear lots of stories. Of course each situation varies.
Speaking in general, one common tactic that often works is de- escalation and negotiation. As an example, a Vietnam vet with PTSD was off his medication, I guess prescription needed renewed. He told his girlfriend she couldn’t leave or he’d shoot her. She retreated to a bedroom and called 911. SwAT was dispatched, they immediately contacted him through cellphone, from the yard, and convinced him to surrender peacefully. At one point he brandished a rifle at the window, and they could have legally shot him, but as he wasn’t pointing it at them, and they werent sure if the girlfriend was in the same room, they retreated and opted to try and reason with him. On this day, it worked. He spent a day in jail, got his meds and was released. It ended happily.
I am a bit baffled in the Capps case, why a similar approach was not tried. Of course I was not there and each situation has unique factors.
October 31, 2023 @ 1:28 pm
“I am a bit baffled in the Capps case, why a similar approach was not tried.”
From the TBI Report: “(Officer) Brewer explained that he and other team members had received information that the suspect claimed he would kill police if they came to his house, so that… influenced their plan.”
November 1, 2023 @ 9:16 am
@Coat–
There may be an element of CYA–(Cover your keister) here, with the police making the initial information sound extra alarming and dangerous, in order to justify their SWAT-team-guns-out response.
The reason for my suspicion is that the police officer who was literally at the initial scene–the stepdaughter’s boyfriend–left the premises when Capps was distracted or dozed off and did not take any action or even report it to department–while his girlfriend and her mother were still in the house with Capps! That suggests that in his estimation, Capps did not pose an iminent danger.
October 31, 2023 @ 12:13 pm
I’ve said all along, something here just doesn’t pass the smell test, and I am not referring to the police.
November 4, 2023 @ 10:35 am
There was absolutely not the slightest scintilla of de escalation here on January 5. End. Stop.