Posted on 11/21/2008 7:06:27 AM PST by Born Conservative
SNYDERSVILLE (PA) — A 75-year-old man is in surgery in Lehigh Valley Hospital after being shot five times during an armed confrontation with state police in his residence.
Police were called to 4103 Manor Drive shortly after midnight for a report of shots fired. They talked to Hagen's roommate, whose name has not been released, and were told Hagen was recently diagnosed with dementia and displayed erratic behavior during the past few days.
Hagen was in his bedroom with the door closed. Police said they could hear him calling out different names. Police knocked on the door and entered cautiously. They saw Hagen holding a shotgun so they rushed his roommate out of the residence.
Police retreated to a safe spot and called to Hagen to drop his weapon and come out. He came out of the room but was still holding his shotgun. Police again told him to drop it but Hagen instead pointed the gun at two of the troopers.
Police began firing, dispensing 11 shots which hit Hagen in the leg, arm, hand, head and shoulder. Hagen did not fire his weapon.
Hagen was flown to the hospital shortly after 1 a.m.
The two troopers who fired on him are William Skotleski and Todd Tolan. A third officer, Cpl. Thomas Hothouse, was also at the scene. The officers have been placed on desk duty until an investigation into the shooting is complete.
"A shooting involving police is extremely unusual. The use of deadly force is justified when officers believe they or someone else is in jeopardy," said Capt. James Murtin of the state police.
Police are checking to see if Hagen's shotgun was loaded. A hand gun found in his bedroom was loaded, police said.
Sux, but can't really fault the cops.
Yeah those shotguns are difficult to determine.
BUll sh=t, They knew that he was sick and they pushed the issue, damn fools. He would have went to sleep sooner are later.
And if they used Tasers and the old guy died of a heart attack they'd be criticized for that.
Sad all around. The guy was apparently not in his right mind, and the troopers were probably justified shooting, being that they had a shotgun pointed at them.
Having dealt professionally with patients with Dementia, I can tell you that had the Police not taken action with this man, he easily could have started taking pot shots out the window.
Agitated patients DO NOT just fall asleep. It’s not a bit of confusion, the brain synapses are misfiring. Like a patient on PCP it has to do with the brain, not just the body. Immediate action must be taken.
It’s a horrible pity that his man was killed but his roomate should have taken the guns out of his way as soon as he was diagnosed.
Poor fellow is another victim of the leftist mantra “Mental illness is just like any other illness”. We really need to completely overhaul how our legal system deals with mental illness, and start by throwing out that utterly false claim.
A doctor who diagnoses a new or worsened mental illness should have a court system to turn to, so that the patient will get a prompt, confidential hearing BEFORE s/he does something that seriously endangers him/herself or others. The court and social services can then make a formal determination as to whether the person needs to have a legal guardian appointed, and if so, whether there are any family members able and willing to take on that responsibility. When someone’s mind has gone kaput, just sending them home with a prescription and maybe an appointment to see another doctor or a social worker, is not a reasonable move.
Your mentality is beyond foolish.
Yes, it has always confounded me that people whom “everyone knows” is mentally ill are allowed to roam free until they hurt themselves or others.
This article says he’s in surgery. Did I miss an update?
shotgun + dementia = potential for death. They did the right thing; you don’t “sleep off” dementia.
Unless you've seen some information more up to date than this article, he wasn't killed, he's "in surgery".
The point of my previous post is that their currently isn't any legal mechanism through which your common sense suggestion could have been carried out in a timely manner. I have a half-sister who has advanced schizophrenia which has never been treated. My father and half-brother have made extensive efforts to get her forced into treatment (she has been living in a makeshift tent near the Texas-Mexico border for many years, and is constantly in and out of jail for stuf like "drunk and disorderly", possession of marijuana, etc.). They finally managed to get a court to order an involuntary psych exam, which naturally found that she was schizophrenic. However, neither the doctor nor the court is formally allowed to tell this to either my father or brother (the court did so informally and probably technically illegally), and my father's/brother's hope that with the diagnosis they could get her declared eligible for Social Security disability was also dashed -- the Texas court explained to them that it is illegal for the court (or the doctor) to tell the federal government that she has been diagnosed with schizophrenia, without her permission, because that would violate her "privacy rights". Needless to say, she doesn't believe she's mentally ill, and so isn't going to give any court or doctor permission to tell the federal government that she is.
This man's roommate was not legally entitled to be told that the man had been diagnosed with a mental illness, and it's quite likely that the man didn't share the formal diagnosis with his roommate. The roommate therefore had no legal basis with which to go to a court and demand that the man's guns (or better yet, the man) be taken away. It's doubtful that a court had been informed of the diagnosis either -- it usually takes an incident like this, in which police are summoned and the person commits a criminal act, before a court gets involved and either requires a court-ordered psych exam or subpoenas records from a doctor who previously performed a psych exam. Without such an incident, a court has no legal right to demand a formal psych evaluation or to take someone's guns away.
Whoops!
Now where did I put my “reading comprehension” glasses.....
“Police again told him to drop it but Hagen instead pointed the gun at two of the troopers.”
Part of the problem is, unlike years-gone-by, when a LEO states that someone pointed a gun at them it’s not automatically believed. Too often in the past they have made things up to cover their a$$. Sadly, abuses on the part of law enforcement in the past, has put themselves and us into this environment.
Much of this mistrust could be eliminated if the cops would wear body-cams. For some reason they resist this though.
thank you very much, ACLU. confining people who do not want to be confined is pretty much impossible unless thay have broken significant laws.
Often they’re allowed to continue to roam free even after hurting themselves or others. The legal standard is whether they “pose an IMMINENT danger to themself or others”.
There was a crack addict in NYC some years ago, who had a habit of grabbing little tots out of strollers on the sidewalk, and tossing them into traffic. He kept getting arrested for this, and kept getting put back out on the street by the idiot judge, who noted that the defendant before her (judge was a her, IIRC) was behaving normally and therefore didn’t meet the test of posing an imminent danger to himself or others, and so couldn’t be detained against his will on mental health grounds. Of course, the reason he behaved normally in court is because he hadn’t been given his usual fix of crack while in jail awaiting his hearing. And of course, the first thing he did every time he was let out, was go smoke some crack.
what’s your point?
Police were called to the scene because of a report of shots already being fired. That was not a water pistol or a potato gun that made those sounds. Police do not carry around shotguns that they can plant on suspects. A small handgun, in some circumstances it has happened. A shotgun, no.
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.