GP police officers cleared in fatal shooting on Parkway - News - MailTribune.com - Medford, OR

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GP police officers cleared in fatal shooting on Parkway Friday Nov 11, 2016 at 11:41 AM Nov 11, 2016 at 11:41 AM By Troy Shinn Grants Pass Daily Courier Josephine County District Attorney Ryan Mulkins announced Thursday that he has finished a review of the officer-involved shooting on the Grants Pass Parkway last month and concluded deadly use of force was justified. "No further action in this matter is anticipated nor merited," Mulkin said in a statement, thanking Oregon State Police for its independent investigation of the shooting. In a news release, Mulkins gave the following account of what happened: On Oct. 13 at 7:26 a.m., 46-year-old Shawn Pappe of Gold Hill drove his silver Chevrolet Tahoe into several parked cars in the parking lot of the Grants Pass Wal-Mart store. He then fled the parking lot, crashing into one of the parked vehicles again before driving over landscaping and a public sidewalk onto the Parkway. While driving on the Parkway, Pappe crossed the center median and crashed into a guardrail, rendering his vehicle inoperable. Lt. Todd Moran of the Grants Pass Department of Public Safety arrived on scene first and attempted to negotiate with Pappe while more officers arrived. Police broke the front passenger side and rear windows of Pappe's vehicle in order to see into it due to heavily tinted windows. Pappe was holding a large, combat-style tactical knife in his hand while speaking with police, using it to chop and stab at the interior of his vehicle. Officers reported that Pappe made a comment about needing his meth. They concluded that Pappe appeared to be under the influence of a stimulant. Officers then advised Pappe that he was under arrest. Many officers had their firearms drawn and pointed at him. Officers informed Pappe that an ambulance was inbound to take hime to the hospital. He was told repeatedly to throw his knife out of the vehicle's window and not to exit his vehicle with the knife in his hand. Moran attempted to negotiate with Pappe for approximately 20 minutes. Pappe then shouted at officers and dove headfirst out of the broken passenger side window, still holding his knife. While he was one the ground, officers tried to subdue him with a Taser and bean bag rounds. He still refused to drop the knife. Pappe then began to advance toward the officers and raise his knife. He was in close proximity to Detective Ryan Brown, Detective John Lohrfink, Cpl. Michael Miner and Officer Scott Williams, who fired multiple live rounds into him as he approached. Pappe was pronounced dead at the scene. In his statement, Mulkin said district attorneys are responsible for reviewing any incident where force is used by police to determine if it was consistent with Oregon law. He said that while incidents like this may at times be reviewed by a grand jury, in this case he determined no crime took place and that there was no conflicting evidence of the incident, making it unnecessary. He did not mention whether the evidence included video. Pappe previously made headlines in 2015 after he was convicted of second-degree arson for setting fire to an outbuilding on his former property, which was in foreclosure, in Gold Hill. The deadly confrontation was the Department of Public Safety's first officer-involved fatal shooting since September 2014, when 29-year-old Daniel Diaz was killed during an armed standoff on Northwest Blossom Drive. That shooting was believed to be the first fatal shooting involving Grants Pass police in the city's history. A grand jury later ruled the shooting was justified.