Dear Editor,
It has now been 10 months since my brother, Scott Garvey, was shot and killed after he himself reached out to the Vermont State Police during a mental health crisis.
Every morning, I wake up wondering whether today will finally be the day the investigation findings are released.
Ten months of waiting. Ten months of silence. Ten months of living in a kind of purgatory where life cannot fully move forward because we are still waiting for the state to explain how and why Scott died.
I’ve received no updates or communication. No timeline. No sense that our family deserves even basic transparency.
What makes this harder is the reality that investigations involving police shootings seem to move differently. Public attention fades. Headlines disappear. Families are left carrying grief while waiting for answers that never seem to come.
And in the 50 years for which Vermont has shared public records, the state appears never to have concluded that a homicide by a Vermont state trooper was unjustified. That reality makes this process feel less like a search for truth and more like a system protecting itself.
Maybe there are explanations for the delay. But from this side of it, the experience has been isolating, exhausting and profoundly inhumane.
We are still here. Mama J is still here. Kara is still here. Waiting.
We still wake up every day without answers. We still love and miss Scott every hour of every day. And we still believe that a man suffering a mental health crisis deserved care, time, dignity and compassion — not bullets.
Shawn Garvey
East Dummerston, Vt.
