This article was updated at 7 p.m. Friday.
Vermont State Police are investigating an early Friday morning officer-involved shooting that left a Montpelier man dead.
Police identified the man who was shot and killed by Montpelier Police around 5:15 a.m. Friday on the Spring Street bridge near the Main Street roundabout as 62-year-old Mark Johnson.
Police said Johnson had raised what appeared to be a black pistol in the direction of officers, refusing orders to drop it. One of the officers fired his patrol rifle, striking and killing Johnson, according to police.
Police later identified Johnson’s weapon as a Daisy Powerline pellet pistol.
Johnson’s body was taken to the Chief Medical Examiner’s Office in Burlington for an autopsy, which determined the cause of death was two shots to the torso, and the manner of death was “homicide/shot by police.”
A man who lived in the Pioneer Apartments not far from the fatal shooting scene said he didn’t see what happened, but he heard it.
“There was just lots of yelling,” the man said, “and then pop, pop, pop.”
Vermont State Police Maj. Dan Trudeau, speaking Friday afternoon at a press conference held a short distance from the fatal shooting scene, said that Johnson had a history of mental illness, adding, “We’re still looking into that.”
Within the month of June, according to Trudeau, there were three different law enforcement “involvements” with Johnson, including two with the Montpelier Police Department and one with the Barre City Police Department.
Trudeau said those cases “revolved around some comments of some mental health problems,” and did not result in criminal charges.
The incident leading to the shooting Friday began at about 5 a.m., according to Trudeau.
That’s when Montpelier Police received a call of an attempted break-in at the Pioneer Apartments complex adjacent to the Main Street roundabout, according to Trudeau.
The 60-unit property is owned and managed by the Montpelier Housing Authority, an independent affordable housing agency.
The resident who called police, who Trudeau did not name, reported a man with a knife had attempted to enter his apartment, and then left.
“Montpelier PD arrived at the building and identified Mark Johnson as the man who had been trying to get into the apartment,” Trudeau said.
“They observed him leaving the back door of the apartment building,” the major said, “and were able to relocate him as he crossed Main Street and onto the Spring Street bridge.”
The apartment building, which is where Johnson also lived, is only a short distance across the roundabout from the bridge, which spans the North Branch of the Winooski River.
At the time, the officers saw that Johnson had what appeared to be a black pistol, and tried to “de-escalate” the situation for “number of minutes,” according to Trudeau.
“On two separate occasions Mr. Johnson attempted to climb a railing like he was going to jump off the bridge into the water, but did come down,” Trudeau said. “Ultimately, Mr. Johnson pointed the pistol at the Montpelier PD officers (and) one of them fired at him.”
The officer who fired, armed with a patrol rifle, struck Johnson, according to Trudeau.
An ambulance transported Johnson to Central Vermont Medical Center in Berlin, where he was pronounced dead.
No one else was injured during the incident.
Trudeau said the time between the initial call to the apartment complex at 5:04 a.m. to when shots were fired at 5:16 a.m. spanned 12 minutes.
“So there’s a very, very short period of time in which this all transpired,” he said.
Trudeau did not name the officers involved in the shooting or how many shots were fired, saying that more information was expected to be released Saturday. It’s a typical procedure for the names of officers involved in a fatal shooting to be withheld for 24 hours.
The two Montpelier officers who were involved in the shooting have been placed on administrative leave as is also standard protocol in police shootings.
The incident was captured on cruiser video cameras. Montpelier police do not have body cams.
Trudeau said he would not be releasing the cruiser cam footage to the public as the matter remains under investigation.
Several residents of the Pioneer Apartments who spoke to reporters said while they didn’t know the details of what led up to the shooting, they didn’t believe that Johnson should have been shot.
They talked of methods that police could have used, from the use of Tasers to pepper-ball guns, to try to subdue Johnson.
Trudeau said he couldn’t specifically address other options that may have been available or attempted by the responding officers short of lethal force.
“Well, what you’re asking me to do is tell you what I think they perceived and what they should have done. And that’s not fair for me to do in this account,” Trudeau told reporters.
“But I can say, you know, what it’s fair to say,” he added, “is that they felt threatened by the weapon being pointed at them.”
Several residents of the Pioneer Apartments said they had heard that Johnson had gotten locked out of his own apartment and had been using a knife to “jimmy” the lock to his apartment when police were called.
Trudeau, in response, said, “I don’t have any information that he was trying to jimmy his way is in his own apartment. He was at another apartment trying to get in.”
The Main Street roundabout and roads leading to it were closed to traffic from the time of the shooting to around 2:30 p.m. Friday as state police Crime Scene Search Team investigated at the site.
Montpelier Police Chief Anthony Facos said at the scene Friday morning that he was referring all questions to Vermont State Police, the agency investigating the shooting.
When the state police investigation is complete, it will be turned over for independent reviews by the Vermont Attorney General’s Office and the Washington County State’s Attorney’s Office.
Residents in the area were confused and unsure of what had occurred.
“I honestly was asleep and my partner woke me up. Honestly I didn’t know what to expect,” said Dalton Lang, who lives on the corner of Elm and Spring streets.
Lang said he and his partner saw a tent canopy with a “sleeping bag-like” object underneath it.
“All of this looked like it couldn’t be good. And it didn’t feel safe to be in our apartment so we walked down to Uncommon (Market) to get a coffee,” Lang added.
This is the second fatal shooting in Montpelier in the past two years.
Police shot and killed Nathan Giffin, 32, of Essex, following a nearly hour-long standoff at Montpelier High School in January 2018. The Vermont Attorney General’s Office investigated the incident and declined to press charges against the officers involved.
Another officer-involved shooting involving a pellet gun took place in September 2017 in Poultney.
In that case, police said five members of the team opened fire and killed 32-year-old Michael Battles after he pointed a weapon — later determined to be a BB gun — at officers from a second-story window in his home during a standoff.
The Attorney General’s Office also cleared those officers of wrongdoing following an investigation.
Around mid-morning Friday a group of five people, who said they heard about the shooting but didn’t know Johnson, placed an arrangement of mixed flowers, including a large, bright yellow sunflower, at the base of a tree along the edge of the Main Street roundabout.
They held their arms out to their sides with hands up and spoke at times in hushed tones, and in others remained silent.
“We wanted to pray for whoever was wounded or killed,” said Nate Peyman, one member of the group. “We’re praying for wisdom, and temperance. and tolerance.”
Added a woman who didn’t want to be named, “We don’t want things like this to happen in Montpelier so we came to pray, from our different traditions to pray together, for temperance, and for unity, and for peace.”
Another woman, who did not want to be named, was out walking her baby in a stroller Friday morning when she came upon the scene.
“I’ve only lived here a couple years and this is the second time that police have shot and killed someone in this town,” she said. “It’s fucked up.”
The woman added, “Someone’s life was the loss, I mean just the gravity of the situation is hard to comprehend.”
