Two weeks ago, Spokane Pastor Wayne Creach was shot and killed by Officer Brian Hirzel (pictured at right). Up until now we’ve only had a rough sketch of what happened that night. Around midnight, Hirzel’s unmarked car stopped in the parking lot of Creach’s nursery. The 74-year-old approached the vehicle, armed and shirtless. A shot was fired. Now we have more details. But still no definitive answer to the question: was it murder or self-defense?Pastor Wayne Creach was shot and killed in the parking lot of his nursery by a Spokane police officer.Hirzel says the latter. The 18-year veteran told investigators he was writing up tickets in his Crown Vic when he saw Creach walking towards him, a gun at his side.Creach was a fairly well known quantity to Spokane police. The leader of a congregation of Southern Baptists had apprehended many a trespasser in his time, and always did so with a piece and a flashlight.But if some Spokane police knew this about Creach, Hirzel wasn’t one of them. And that seems to be part of what led to the fatal misunderstanding.Hirzel says that Creach was on him before he had time to get out of his car. He aimed his gun out of the driver’s side window and told Creach to back up.Hirzel claims he told Creach four or six times to drop his weapon. An order Creach at first refused.”People have stolen from me before,” Creach allegedly told the officer.This should have clued Hirzel in to the fact that the man he was talking to wasn’t a prowler, but the property owner. Unfortunately, Hirzel didn’t pick up on that clue.Even according to Hirzel’s own testimony, it appears Creach was compliant. Up to a point.When Hirzel asked him to back up, Creach backed up. When Hirzel asked him to put away his weapon, Creach slipped his gun into the waist band behind his back. But when Hirzel asked the elderly man to get down on the ground he says Creach refused.What happened next will probably determine Hirzel’s fate. The officer says that he struck Creach in the knee with his baton. Hirzel says Creach buckled, then reached for his gun as he was falling.Hirzel claims he took the shot out of a fear for his life. Creach’s son says it’s something else.”You can spin it any which way,” Alan Creach told the Spokesman-Review. “I look at it as murder.”