Dustin Mertz could easily be dead.
Instead, he had the chance Thursday to apologize the police officer who let him live.
“Thanks for saving my life,” Mertz told Denver police Lt. Dikran Kushdilian as Mertz pleaded guilty Thursday to assault and trespassing.
Last October, Mertz broke into Kushdilian’s home at 4 a.m. as the officer, his wife and their 7-month-old son slept.
But rather than reach for his service weapon, Kushdilian grabbed a shotgun loaded with beanbags. He had to repeatedly shoot Mertz, who was drunk and stoned, hit him with the gun’s butt and wrestle with the then 18-year-old.
Mertz was stunned – not killed. But it was close.
“If he had made one more move at me, we might not be here today,” Kushdilian told the judge, who sentenced Mertz to nine months in jail after Mertz pleaded guilty to misdemeanor assault and felony criminal trespass charges.
As part of the plea, the felony assault charge was dismissed and the felony trespass charge will be dropped from Mertz’s record if he stays clean for two years.
Denver District Judge William Robbins wanted Mertz to know that Kushdilian would have been justified in killing him for breaking into the house after attending a nearby party.
“You’re about this close from being dead,” Robbins said.
Mertz thanked Kushdilian for not killing him and for prompting him to quit drugs and alcohol, move back in with his parents and straighten out his life.
“There’s no way to express how sorry I am for what I did that night,” Mertz said.
The defense, asking for no jail time, argued that Mertz had wandered into Kushdilian’s house thinking it was where he had attended the party and was too intoxicated to understand what was happening.
Kushdilian said he repeatedly told Mertz that he had broken into a police officer’s house and was under arrest, but Mertz continued to fight him.
Kushdilian testified that he and his wife had an idyllic relationship until the break-in, but now they fight all the time.
His wife, Shay, seemed unable to forgive Mertz. “I despise you for what you did to us that night,” she said through tears. “I will never be the same.”
Kushdilian, dressed in his police uniform, said he wasn’t happy when prosecutors told him Mertz would not be treated differently just because the victim was a cop.
Kushdilian was also not happy that the plea deal allowed Mertz to avoid a felony charge.
The way he sees it, Mertz got his break last October.
“He got his deal that night when I didn’t kill him,” he said.
Staff writer Arthur Kane can be reached at 303-954-1244 or akane@denverpost.com.
