WYOMING, Mich. — Two Wyoming Department of Public Safety officers were justified in firing their weapons during a standoff last month, the Kent County Prosecutor’s Office ruled.
Kent County prosecutor Chris Becker released that official ruling Friday afternoon.
At 1:03 a.m. June 13, the officers responded to a domestic dispute call on Timber Ridge Trail SW. Both officers eventually discharged their firearms, and nobody was hit by the gunshots.
The first police official to fire their weapon was a sergeant inside the apartment. He fired his weapon after hearing someone load a rifle and then saw the weapon emerge from behind a wall. The gun he fired at was held by suspect Cory Robinson, the report from the prosecutor’s office says.
After seeing the first officer fire shots, another officer went outside the apartment complex and took cover behind a vehicle.
Click here to read Becker’s entire statement.
The prosecutor’s office says the officer then saw someone he believed to be Robinson opening the second-floor apartment window holding an object he thought was a gun.
The person was actually Robinson’s roommate who had locked himself in the bathroom and police later saw he holding a cellphone. Becker says the roommate had climbed out the apartment’s bathroom window after hearing the initial gunshots.
The officer shot at the while he was standing in the window, though he was not hit.
Becker’s statement says that the officer who fired at Robinson’s roommate made a mistake in firing his weapon, but that “the law allows for a mistake in a turbulent situation like this.” The officer will not face criminal charges.
Robinson was taken into custody after a brief standoff following the shots being fired.
