By Sarah Brumfield, The Associated Press
DOVER, Del. (AP) -- A tactical officer fired on a serial rapist when the inmate sexually assaulted the counselor he was holding hostage and threatened to stab her, Delaware correction officials said Tuesday.
When inmate Scott Miller spotted the officer, who was hiding in the ceiling, Miller, armed with a homemade knife, charged up a pile of furniture toward the officer, then spun around and shouted that he would stab his hostage, said Department of Correction Commissioner Stan Taylor.
The officer fired one shot from a handgun “with no apparent effect” and fired again, Taylor said. Unsure if Miller had been hit, the tactical officer and a second officer tumbled into the room, pulling down the ceiling, he said.
Taylor said the officers handcuffed the inmate as he lay on the ground but determined that he was killed “almost immediately.”
“We grieve the fact that one of our employees was apparently sexually assaulted and we take no pride in the loss of life of an individual but I think this was, in my opinion -- the investigation still needs to be completed by the state police and the State Attorney General’s office -- but I think this was in my opinion a prudent use of deadly force,” Taylor said.
The fatal shooting ended a 6 1/2-hour standoff Monday between the emergency response team and Miller, 45. He was serving 699 years for a series of rapes in 1997, Taylor said.
As a group counseling session with 12 to 18 inmates and two counselors ended about 10:30 a.m., Miller followed the woman into an adjoining room, seized her, and barricaded himself inside with the woman as hostage.
Taylor said the incident appears to have been triggered by his firing from the prison kitchen and his wife’s plans to divorce him.
As an emergency response team negotiated with the inmate, the tactical team set up in the next room and watched through the ceiling, Taylor said.
Over the next several hours, negotiations continued, although prison officials were hampered by torrential rain Monday that at times disrupted power, caused flooding, and made the hostage negotiation team generally miserable. The shooting occurred during a pause in the negotiations that concerned the teams, when the tactical officer saw Scott assaulting his hostage.
Taylor refused to identify the tactical officer involved in the shooting.
The woman, a 27-year-old department of correction counselor, was treated and released at a nearby hospital Monday evening, Taylor said.
“She’s obviously very upset, emotionally wrought,” Taylor said. “She’s only interested in seeing certain people she’s well acquainted with.”
Taylor said the officer has been placed on administrative assignment pending a routine investigation of the shooting and Miller’s death by the state police and the state attorney general’s office.
Taylor described the officer as a “concerned, caring person. He’s concerned about what he did, but he knows what he did saved the life of the hostage.”
This is not the first time that a correction officer has shot an inmate, said Bureau Chief of Prisons Paul Howard, but it is the first time that an inmate has been shot and killed.