MT. SHASTA, Calif. — The man killed in a Christmas Day shooting by a police office on board Amtrak’s Coast Starlight was disabled and suffered from mental health issues, his mother told the Redding Record Searchlight.
Nicholas Detweiler Haritoudis, 32, was a train passenger, traveling from Klamath Falls, Ore., to California’s Sonoma County, when was shot and killed by a Mt. Shasta officer early on Dec. 25, his mother, Julia Detwiler, told the newspaper. An Amtrak crew member was wounded and the police officer was also injured in the incident about 12:30 a.m. [see “One killed in Christmas morning police shooting …,” Trains News Wire, Dec. 27, 2023]. Names of those individuals have not been released.
The California Attorney General’s Office is investigating the shooting. Few details have been released; it remains unknown why the train stopped in Mt. Shasta, which is not a regular stop for the train, or what led to the shooting.
“We want it known that he was basically an ordinary person and he loved to travel,” Detwiler told the Record Searchlight. “His joy was to travel on Amtrak trains. It was a very important part of his life, and I don’t know what transpired to bring this type of force onto the train.”
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