Officers fatally shot Matthew Davis on Tuesday night following a short foot chase and after he pulled a knife and lunged at police trying to talk to him about the death of Mary Anderson, according to Vermont State Police.
Anderson’s body had been found hours earlier in her truck in Brattleboro. Davis, according to police, was a former boyfriend of Anderson and was considered a “person of interest” in her death.
Vermont State Police previously stated that officers had shot at and killed Davis late Tuesday night in West Brattleboro. In a press release Wednesday evening they provided details about the foot chase and his reported lunging at police with a knife.
Brattleboro police discovered the body of Mary Anderson, 23, of Harvard, Massachusetts, at about 12:55 a.m. Tuesday inside her blue Toyota Tacoma pickup. The vehicle, according to police, had been parked on Elliot Street, a short distance from Main Street.
Police said they had been looking for Davis, 34, of Fitchburg, Massachusetts, throughout Tuesday. He was spotted by a Vermont State Police detective walking in West Brattleboro at about 7:45 p.m. later that night, and they tried to talk to him about Anderson.
Vermont State Police Maj. Dan Trudeau said police were canvassing for video surveillance when they spotted Davis. “It was just luck,” he told MyNBC5.
Two state police troopers and a Brattleboro officer fired at Davis following the short chase and after he came at them with a knife, according to the Wednesday press release.
That release also identified the two members of the state police who fired their department-issued handguns as Detective Sgt. Jesse Robson and Detective Sgt. Samuel Truex. As per department policy, according to the release, they will be on paid administrative leave for at least five days.
Robson has served with the state police since 2001 and is currently assigned to the department’s Bureau of Criminal Investigations out of the Westminster Barracks. Truex joined the force in 1998 and now works as part of the department’s Major Crime Unit.
Patrol Officer Ryder Carbone was identified in the release as the Brattleboro Police Department member who fired his department-issued shotgun at Davis. Per protocol, Carbone was also placed on paid administrative leave.
Autopsies on the bodies of Anderson and Davis were planned for Wednesday, at the Vermont Chief Medical Examiner’s Office in Burlington, but information regarding cause and manner of death are not expected before Thursday.
Anderson was last seen alive late Saturday night in Hudson, New Hampshire. Her family reported her missing the next day.
On Tuesday night, a vigil was held at a church in Harvard, where dozens gathered around Anderson’s family in mourning.
Sheila Anderson, Mary Anderson’s mother, told reporters on Tuesday that her daughter and Davis broke up last November, and “it was a rough breakup. He didn’t want it.”
She also said that Davis “had anger issues.”
“He clearly didn’t agree with that decision (to end the relationship). All of us sensed something wasn’t right,” Ali Giannino, a friend of Anderson, told The Boston Globe. “None of us saw this coming. There were no signs that he would do anything like this.”
Davis was convicted in a 2009 incident in Pittsfield, Massachusetts, in which he hid in the home of his ex-girlfriend — the mother of two of his three children — and jumped out of a closet to stab her current boyfriend, using a large kitchen knife. The man recovered from several stab wounds, and Davis was sentenced to four to nine years in prison for the jealousy-fueled violence, according to The Berkshire Eagle.
