'He wasn't anybody you'd want to stop': Police kill man wielding ax, knife in downtown Richmond

A Richmond officer also was injured when he was struck in the vest by friendly fire, authorities said. The 12-year department veteran was treated at a hospital and has been released.

The shooting unfolded shortly after 10 a.m. in the intersection of East Main and Third streets outside 3rd Street Diner. The police had been receiving reports that the armed man — who was wearing a kilt, combat-style boots and no shirt — had been wandering in other parts of downtown and Shockoe Slip.

Police Chief Alfred Durham said that when officers encountered the man, they tried to de-escalate the situation and ordered him to drop his weapons. Police used a Taser, but when that was not effective, two officers fired their guns, Durham said.

Tiffany McCoy was waiting tables at 3rd Street Diner on Tuesday when a customer drew her attention outside.

She saw the man surrounded by five or six officers, their guns drawn. He was jumping around, screaming and swinging the weapons aggressively, she said. Then the man advanced toward police, and they opened fire.

“It happened so quick,” McCoy said. “He went after them. He was tased. It didn’t faze him. He got within a few feet. They had no other option.”

The two officers who fired their guns struck the man “about the body,” Durham said. He was pronounced dead at 10:31 a.m. at a hospital.

McCoy said she saw the man bleed out before her eyes. It was clear, McCoy and other witnesses said, that he died at the scene.

“I’ve never really witnessed anything like that,” she said.

She was shaken up and took the rest of the day off from her job at the diner, where she is in her second week of waiting tables.

Her co-worker Taryn Kelly said she heard the officers telling the man to drop the weapons and stop moving toward them before they fired. She recounted the story between serving customers; the diner had closed after the shooting but reopened at 12:30 p.m.

“It wasn’t like a police brutality thing,” she said. “He was acting real crazy.”

Investigators are reviewing body-worn camera videos taken by officers at the scene. Those videos will not be released immediately because of the ongoing investigation, police said.

Police said they will release the man’s name once an identification has been made and his relatives have been notified.

They also did not name the officers who shot him. But in a statement released late Tuesday afternoon, the department said that the “names of the RPD officers involved in the shooting will be released once a threat assessment has been conducted.”

“I am sorry about the loss of life that occurred today,” Durham said in the department’s statement. “I wish there had been a different outcome. But it is important to remember what my officers are dealing with at this time. They have been interviewed and placed on administrative leave. I will release their names once I am assured there is no threat of retaliation against them.”

Police first received a report about 9:30 a.m. of a person armed with an ax and a long knife near Tredegar Iron Works, and a second report about 10 minutes later of the suspect threatening construction workers near South Fifth and Tredegar streets.

A construction worker said the man tried to walk across a bridge leading to Brown’s Island that was closed for maintenance. The witness said that another worker tried to stop the man, who responded by displaying the handle of a large knife and proceeded across the bridge.

“It was a big, big knife,” said the witness, who declined to give his name. “He wasn’t anybody you’d want to stop.”

Also before the shooting, police received reports of a person walking around with weapons at South Ninth and East Cary streets and at South 12th and East Canal streets near the Omni Richmond Hotel.

A cab driver, George Coleman, said he was parked outside the Omni when he saw a man walking on a sidewalk waving a “sword-like” knife in the air and talking to himself.

“I didn’t understand nothing that he was saying,” Coleman said.

Kevin Barber saw the man as he walked along the Canal Walk about 9:40 a.m.

“I thought he was talking to someone on a phone,” Barber said in an email. “I didn’t see the actual handle of the knife, as he must have been clutching it. I just thought it was a sheath.”

Meagan Kreiner wrote in a message to the Richmond Times-Dispatch late Tuesday that she photographed the man at 9:12 a.m. on Belle Isle.

"He was tucking a large knife back in a scabbard. ... As we passed each other, I smiled and said good morning, and he looked at me, squinted, said 'nice (tattoos),' I thanked him and that was that," she wrote.

"He seemed OK when I passed him. His body language wasn't threatening or I wouldn't have said good morning. He commented back to me and smiled. It's very upsetting that 15 min later he was threatening people and dead shortly after," she continued. 

The chief said the department is conducting a routine investigation into the use of deadly force. Investigators with the department’s Force Investigation Team interviewed several eyewitnesses, and forensic analysts collected evidence at the scene late Tuesday morning.

Officers involved in the shooting were being interviewed by investigators at police headquarters, Durham said.

“It will take time to get to the bottom of this and find out what actually happened as it relates to our use of force by the Richmond Police Department,” Durham said.

Protocol in police-involved shootings mandates that the investigation’s findings be forwarded to the Commonwealth’s Attorney’s Office for a determination in justifying the appropriate use of force.

The incident marks the second fatal officer-involved shooting in Richmond this year.

Officer Cleophas Williams fatally shot Jaison Fitzgerald, 29, of the 1900 block of Accommodation Street, about 6 p.m. May 15 during a traffic stop in the 3800 block of Lynhaven Avenue. Earlier in the day, Fitzgerald had shot at a girlfriend’s family member, according to authorities, and police had taken out several warrants for his arrest.

Williams, who has been with the department two years, was not wearing a camera. Fitzgerald displayed a gun during the traffic stop, and a gun was recovered at the scene, police have said.

Last week, Durham said the internal investigation into the shooting would wrap up Friday, when it would be forwarded to the Commonwealth’s Attorney’s Office for review.