Evansville police shoot and kill a man officers say was having an ‘episode’
EVANSVILLE – Evansville police shot and killed a man Friday who they believed was in the middle of a mental health “episode.”
The man had not been publicly identified as of 6:30 p.m. Friday. The Vanderburgh County Coroner’s Office will release his name after an autopsy, EPD spokeswoman Taylor Merriss said in a news release.
In body camera footage EPD posted to its Facebook page Friday afternoon, an officer repeatedly asks the man, who struggles to speak English, to put down a knife. The videos come from two officers: the officer who initially responded to the call and a second who later arrives and tasers the man.
The footage shows how an incident that initially began as a “911 hang up” unfolded.
Merriss said the fatal shooting occurred just after 10:40 a.m. inside a residence in the 1300 block of North Third Avenue. The Courier & Press is withholding its own release of the body camera footage until authorities publicly identify the deceased man.
The incident began when the man called 911. In the call obtained by Courier & Press, dispatchers struggle to understand the man, who speaks primarily in Spanish. At one point, the dispatcher believed he had cryptically said “they’re killing people.”
Body camera footage shows officers struggling to communicate with him as well. The first responding officer asks the man to put down a knife several times. Although the man’s voice is calm, he repeatedly claims that people are trying to kill him.
“He’s talking about people who aren’t here. I think he might be schizophrenic, having some kind of episode,” the first officer says as another officer arrives about five minutes after the first video.
What the footage shows
Police arrived at the scene just after 10:35 a.m. to conduct a welfare check, Merriss said.
In the first video, an officer is seen approaching the front door of the residence and talking to a woman.
“Hello, is everything alright?” the officer is heard asking. “We got a call.”
The woman tells the officer that she thinks the man is “high” right now, and the officer is seen walking into the house with her.
The man who made the 911 call is seen standing in an adjacent room, where there also appears to be a child. The officer finally asks the woman to take “the kids” into the living room.
Throughout the footage, other people in the house are heard talking. It is unclear if EPD evacuated the home.
The man confirms to the officer that he made the call. He is then heard speaking in Spanish, before transitioning into English to say, matter-of-factly, “I have a knife.”
“Can you put down your knife for me?” the officer is heard asking. “Can you put down your knife? You’re making me uncomfortable. I came here to talk to you.”
The man agrees to put the knife down, but in the footage he is seen holding the knife while appearing to operate a smartphone. Over the next several minutes, the officers go back and forth trying to get the man to voluntarily put the knife down and explain what prompted him to call 911.
Finally, the man is seen walking towards the back of the house into a dark room, where he repeatedly hints that he can see “people”.
An officer shines his flashlight in the room.
“You’re telling me there are people here,” the officer says. “I want to be able to see them.”
“Can you tell me what’s going on?” says the officer moments later.
“I don’t feel well right now,” the man seems to say.
The officer spends the next two minutes calmly asking the man questions, asking why he is not feeling well and why he called 911. Throughout this interaction, Merris said the man was holding a knife under a blanket while sitting up. across the room where the officer was standing.
In the footage, the man never fully explains why he called 911.
Six minutes and 25 seconds after the first video released by police, one officer is heard telling another: “He’s got a knife in his right hand, he’s acting really weird.” He instructs the man again to put the knife down.
The officer then says that the man appears to be schizophrenic and might be having “an episode.”
“He doesn’t tell me his name; he doesn’t really answer any questions,” the officer said. “He’s dating people who aren’t here.”
Another officer approaches during this exchange. In body camera footage of him, he is seen pointing a taser at the man as officers again ask him to drop the knife.
“You’re scaring us a bit,” one of the officers is heard saying. “So do us a favor and put the knife down.”
The man appears to respond, saying that the officers want to kill him, to which one of them replies, “Nobody wants to kill you. We just want to have a talk.”
About a second later, the man appears to get to his feet, and the second officer discharges his Taser, causing the man to yell in pain, shake violently, and move to the corner of the room.
The officer who fired the Taser then approaches the man, who is now moving erratically across the ground. Although the Taser appears to still be delivering an electrical charge, the man continues to move erratically as he holds the blanket police previously said he used to conceal the knife.
Seconds later, an officer is heard firing multiple shots and the man falls to the ground. In the video, EPD pixelates the man to cover up the blood.
EPD did not reveal which officer fired his weapon.
The officer who got to the house first is then heard saying that he found the knife. They tell the man to turn on his stomach, but he doesn’t respond. The officers are then seen rendering assistance.
“We need something to put pressure on,” one of the officers is heard saying. Moments later, another says, “Now he’s not breathing. We need to start compressions.”
The officers are then seen performing CPR on the man until the videos end.
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Officer who fired weapon placed on leave pending investigation
In a press release, the EPD claimed that the man “pounced on the officers,” causing the officer to discharge his taser.
“The subject then advanced on one of the officers with the knife still in hand,” the news release reads. “A second EPD officer fired his duty weapon at least once, striking the man.”
The officer who fired the fatal shots will be suspended pending further investigation, the department said late Friday. That is standard EPD practice after a police shooting.
None of the officers involved were injured. Their names have not been publicly released.
Houston Harwood can be contacted at walter.harwood@courierpress.com with story ideas and questions. Twitter: @houston_whh.
Contact Jon Webb at jon.webb@courierpress.com