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The Bernalillo County Sheriff's deputies who responded to a distraught, suicidal 20-year-old two years ago should have approached her slowly with calming gestures and Tasers, instead of rushing to her and shooting her dead in less than 25 seconds, a wrongful death lawsuit filed in state District Court says.

The lawsuit, filed Tuesday in Albuquerque, says a lack of training at the Bernalillo County Sheriff's Department's training academy is directly responsible for the deputies' actions that left Brittany Wayne dead in her bedroom on the city's West Side.

Sheriff's Department policy does allow not comment on any lawsuit, even if deputies want to express condolences or other opinions, Undersheriff Sal Baragiola said.

The deputies involved were not charged with any wrongdoing, and a grand jury declined to pursue a case against them.

The family sees it differently. "The way they went in there was typical police command-and-control style. But you don't do that at all with a mentally ill person, because it just escalates the situation," the family's attorney, Cammie Nichols, said.

And the situation was already bad when the family called for help on Nov. 20, 2005.

Earlier that day, Wayne, who had been home just a week from a mental health treatment center, had tried to hang herself with a belt, according to the lawsuit. Her mother, a nurse, resuscitated her.

Later, as her mother took a bath, Brittany used kitchen knives to gouge her wrists in another apparent suicide attempt.

Her parents, Paul and Debra Wayne, placed a heart-wrenching, 15-minute call to 911 that captures their daughter's last desperate moments. It also recorded their own pleas for their daughter to stop hurting herself and the 23 seconds deputies spent in the home before Brittany was shot three times by a rookie deputy.

The recording indicates the deputy spent about 12 seconds interacting with the distraught woman before firing.

The Waynes say they hope the lawsuit over their daughter's death will make the Sheriff's Department change its training practices for deputies who encounter people in mental health crises.

"I know that the main thing that the family wants is to leave some sort of legacy for Brittany other than her tragic death," Nichols said.

In addition to issues with training, the lawsuit claims the deputies should have been equipped with nonlethal options to subdue her, such as a stun gun.

According to the lawsuit, Deputies Bryan Judy — then on the force for about a year-and-a-half — and Raymond Perea — then on the force for about four years and familiar with the Waynes' circumstances from previous calls to the home — came into the Wayne house with their guns drawn and raised.

Brittany Wayne was in her bedroom, with a bookshelf knocked over in front of the door that prevented it from opening more than 21 inches, according to the complaint.

On the 911 tape, Judy is heard ordering Wayne to put down the knife, to which she screams "No." At one point she yells, "I'm going to stab you." Seconds later, Judy twice orders her to get on her knees, then fires three shots.

Perea had to tackle Paul Wayne as he rushed to his daughter, screaming.

At the time of the shooting, Baragiola said deputies are trained to shoot to kill, not to injure, and are trained to use such force only when their lives or others' are threatened.

The threshold for using deadly force starts when an attacker is as far as 20 feet away, Baragiola said, because even if shot at that distance, a suspect can continue a deadly attack. Baragiola said Brittany Wayne was about 4 feet from Judy when she was shot.

"When we go to a domestic dispute, we tend to immediately go to the source of the threat," Baragiola said in 2005. "I don't think he (Judy) was expecting he'd open the door, make eye contact and then be attacked."

According to the lawsuit, Brittany Wayne was not threatening to Judy, only herself.

She was an intelligent young woman who aspired to attend West Point, her family said. But in her years at Cibola High School, mental illness crept up.

She developed bulimia, depression, bipolar and borderline personality disorders, issues that later led to her discharge from the military, according to the lawsuit. West Point declined her application.

She also developed post-traumatic stress disorder, though what she'd suffered from isn't made clear in the lawsuit.

Back home with her parents, run-ins with law enforcement started in 2004.

The lawsuit says deputies dispatched to the home, which was flagged in the dispatch system as the home of a mentally ill woman who was often suicidal, should have been aware or been made aware by supervisors that Brittany Wayne had special needs.

"But they had no training in dealing with that situation," Nichols said. "The lack of training is pretty shocking, and none of it had to happen the way it did."