By Deborah Hirsh
The Charlotte Observer
GASTONIA, N.C. - A Gastonia police officer Thursday shot and killed a man who was attacking the last of four people he stabbed that night, police said.
Chief Terry Sult said officers found Terry Adam Boone, 20, stabbing a man in a neighborhood off South Marietta Street at the southern edge of downtown.
Sult said Boone ignored Detective Scott Barnes’ commands to stop and then turned to challenge him “in a threatening manner,” still holding the knife. Barnes fired a single shot, Sult said.
Boone later died at the hospital, apparently from the gunshot wound, though an autopsy is pending. Police did not say where the gunshot struck Boone.
Police first heard something was going on in that neighborhood just before 11 p.m. when Gaston Memorial Hospital called to alert them that a man had showed up with stab wounds, Sult said.
By the time police arrived, Sult said, Boone had already stabbed two others -- a man and then a woman who was trying to pull Boone away.
Sult said police are still looking for one victim, who showed up at the hospital but left before being treated. His identity was not available. The others were: Edward Reed, 29, of Kings Mountain; Rebecca Hadden, 22, who lived in the neighborhood; and Richard Mize, 48, a homeless man from Gastonia. Sult said he believed none of them had suffered life-threatening injuries.
Boone has a long criminal history that includes convictions for breaking and entering, larceny and drug possession.
His girlfriend, Audrey Lingerfelt, said Friday that she didn’t fully understand what happened but thought Boone had been arguing with someone that night about painkillers he’d purchased. She said he had run up to her house with a small stab wound in his upper chest and a knife in his hand.
“He said, `Baby, if I go to jail you know I love you,’ ” she said. “We hugged and kissed and said `I love you.’ ”
Lingerfelt, 19, said police could’ve used a Taser or done something else to stop Boone.
“He didn’t deserve to die,” she said.
“I just don’t know what I’m going to tell my kids because my kids called him Daddy.”
Sult said the department’s internal Office of Professional Standards would investigate the shooting as well as the State Bureau of Investigation, at his request. Following standard procedures, he said, Barnes will remain on paid administrative leave until the investigation is completed.
Sult said Barnes appears to have acted according to policy, which states that officers are justified in using deadly force when it appears necessary to defend themselves or others from an imminent threat of serious physical injury or death.
“These are split second decisions and they’re very difficult decisions to make. It’s a very unusual case anytime you have multiple people stabbed like this. It’s a tragedy for everyone that’s involved. It’s hard to measure the psychological trauma that they all go through.”
Barnes, 39, has worked for the department since 1990.
Spokeswoman Donna Lahser described him as an “outstanding officer.”
Lahser said Gastonia police officers had fatally shot a total of six people since 1994. The most recent one occurred in March 2002.
Cpyright 2008 The Charlotte Observer