The Associated Press
LAKE CHARLES, La. (AP) - Police fatally shot a man who apparently was mentally ill early Monday. But the officers opened fire only after the man resisted pepper spray, disabled a stun gun and threatened the officers with a knife, authorities said.
Edward Ned, 48, was pronounced dead at a hospital shortly after the confrontation at his apartment on the fourth floor of the Chateau du Lac low-income housing complex, police spokesman Mark Kraus said.
Kraus said police suspected Ned was mentally unstable when he called them twice late Sunday, first complaining of a peeping tom and later saying that someone was trying to build a ladder to get into his residence.
Later, police received a third call from a witness who said Ned was creating a disturbance by arguing with himself in the parking lot, saying he was going to die, and then dancing, alone, in the lobby of his apartment building.
When officers arrived he was back in his apartment. He pulled out a knife as the officers tried to speak with him, Kraus said.
Kraus said pepper spray had virtually no effect on Ned. Officers then fired a stun gun into Ned’s midsection, Kraus said, but Ned, knife still in hand, managed to cut the wires that fire from the gun like a harpoon and deliver an electric shock.
“Supposedly, he said, ‘Is that all you’ve got?’ then the officers fired several rounds, which stopped him,” Kraus said.
Kraus said the officers, under department policy, would have been justified in drawing their guns as soon as Ed began to wield the knife in a life-threatening way.
“But the officers attempted with an abundance of caution, to use pepper spray, a Taser - non-deadly tools,” he said.
State police have taken over the investigation, which is standard when a local police department is involved in a fatal shooting.
“We believe by witnesses accounts that this person suffered a long history of mental illness,” Kraus said. “You can’t leave them out in a parking lot wielding a knife, you’ve got to arrest them. It’s a huge problem for society and unfortunately it falls on the watch of police agents who at 1 a.m. have to find some substandard facility to hold them in.”