Subscribe
Jobs
Cars
Real Estate
Apts
Classifieds
Shop
A fatal police shooting in a quiet near-northeast-side neighborhood Wednesday morning left neighbors shaken.
About 5:30 a.m., a Fort Wayne police sniper fired a single shot that killed 56-year-old Stephen T. Thompson outside his home after Thompson pointed a shotgun at officers. When they searched his home, officers found containers with 100 gallons of gasoline in his garage after he threatened to blow up the neighborhood.
The Allen County Coroner's Office ruled Thompson's death a police action-shooting homicide. It is the county's first homicide of 2009.
The shooting seemed out of place in a neighborhood where the vast majority of residents are older than 65 and many know each other's names and medical histories. A number of residents on that block of Kenwood Avenue said they knew Thompson as a friendly man whose children visited him often.
But Thompson was "despondent, paranoid and intoxicated" when he called police and told them to go to a West State Boulevard home about 3 a.m., police Chief Rusty York said Wednesday afternoon.
When officers arrived at the State Boulevard home, a family member told them they could find Thompson at his home at 1704 Kenwood.
As police approached the Kenwood Avenue address, officers heard what they believed were two gunshots from inside the home. The department's Emergency Services Team and crisis negotiators were then dispatched to the area, York said.
A Critical Response Team officer negotiated with Thompson on his cell phone for more than an hour, during which time Thompson threatened to kill himself and threatened to harm officers. He also threatened to blow up the neighborhood and warned police that their bulletproof vests would not protect them, York said. Police also believe the man was listening to police radio communication on the Internet.
About 5:30 a.m., Thompson walked out the front door of his house and cycled his pump-action shotgun. He then pointed the weapon at an area where police had taken cover.
At that time, a police sniper stationed behind a Crescent Avenue home - about 65 yards away - shot Thompson once in the head with a .308-caliber rifle, killing him, York said.
The police chief declined to provide the officer's name but said he was a supervisor with at least 15 years' experience. He has also shot and killed a person once before in the line of duty, York said.
York said the officer is due procedural administrative time off and will be called into the station for an interview about the shooting later in the week.
Fort Wayne police detectives are investigating the shooting. As is standard procedure with a police-action shooting, State Police detectives are conducting an independent review.
But the chief stressed that the officer who pulled the trigger has his full support.
York said he didn't know whether the shotgun Thompson had was loaded but said officers feared for their lives.
Nancy Parrish, 76, who lives down the street from the home, said an officer told her Wednesday morning that they shot a man at the house who "used to drink and quit and started drinking again and went berserk."
When they searched Thompson's home, police found about 100 gallons of gasoline in 5-gallon containers in his garage. Some of the lids had been removed from the gas cans. They also found bottle rockets and other guns in the home, York said.
Several Kenwood Avenue residents were visibly shaken Wednesday morning by the police activity on their block and declined to give their names.
The shooting left 97-year-old Irene Gordon wondering what could have happened to the neighbor she knew as a kind man.
Gordon had trouble reconciling what she knew of Thompson and the scene York described to media Wednesday afternoon that she listened to on the radio.
She said Thompson had just taken the application test to receive a ham radio operator's license. He was technologically savvy, she said, and visited Tuesday night to take down the model number of her cordless phone's battery so he could buy her a new one. He told her he would return soon with a new battery, Gordon said.
But in retrospect, Gordon said she sensed that something was off with the neighbor who checked up on her while her children were out of town. As he sat at her kitchen table and ate chocolates, Gordon said Thompson wasn't as "chipper" as he normally was.
And haunted by the knowledge of what happened in the pre-dawn hours Wednesday, she wondered whether she could have done something to help him.
Parrish, another neighbor, said the neighborhood is quiet, with mostly older people living on the block between Crescent Avenue and North Anthony Boulevard.
Court records show that Thompson had no criminal record. And police confirmed they had never previously been called out to Thompson's Kenwood Avenue home.
mzennie@jg.net
