Denton officer fatally shoots man holding woman hostage with knife, police chief says
A man, who police said held a woman hostage in a neck restraint and with a knife to her body, was shot and killed by a responding officer early Saturday at a Denton apartment complex, Denton police said.
The shooting occurred at The Vibe Apartments, at 1610 E. McKinney St. Denton police said they responded to the apartment complex about 1:30 a.m. after they received a call from a man who reported he wanted to kill himself due to “problems” with a woman.
Responding officers, who arrived at the scene within five minutes, found the suspect holding the woman hostage near a courtyard outdoors at the apartment complex, police said.
“Our officers started setting up a perimeter — that’s so they [could] contain the situation where it was and also so we didn’t introduce anyone else into the problem,” Denton Police Chief Frank Dixon said in an early morning news conference video shared on the department’s social media. “One officer in particular, and only one officer, was trying to engage the male into conversation.”
While the officer tried to speak with the hostage-taker, additional law enforcement arrived at the scene after police radio had broadcast that the call had become a hostage situation.
“After about five or six minutes of them attempting to negotiate, there were words being exchanged back and forth between the hostage-taker and our police officers,” Dixon said. “I got to tell you, from the beginning, our police officers showed a tremendous amount of restraint and professionalism. Our officer in particular that was attempting to deescalate and communicate with the hostage-taker did a tremendous job and sustained very calm, trying to engage him and connect with him on a human level.”
After a few minutes of negotiations, the hostage-taker began to raise the knife toward the woman’s body, “almost in a stabbing motion several times,” Dixon said.
“At one point, as the knife was being raised, we had one officer fire one round from his patrol rifle, striking the subject in his upper torso,” the chief said.
As the man fell, officers were able to safely remove the woman from the area near the hostage-taker. Law enforcement then quickly made a plan to disarm the man, who Dixon said was still holding the knife as he lay on the ground. Police eventually deployed a taser as they approached the man.
“They were successful in that taser deployment,” Dixon said. “They moved up, disengaged the knife from him, rolled him over and then started assessing him while simultaneously calling for paramedics to come up.”
Paramedics arrived at the scene within a minute.
The man was taken to a local hospital, where he was pronounced dead. Police have not released his identity as they await notification of next of kin. They said he was a white man in his late 20s.
Investigators are still working to determine his relationship to the woman and whether they lived at the apartment complex.
The Texas Rangers are conducting an investigation of the shooting. Per department policy, the Denton Police Department’s internal affairs unit will conduct an investigation for any possible policy violations.
“I just ask everyone to take a moment to say a prayer for the officers involved, for the deceased and his family — you know, he is somebody’s brother, somebody’s son — and for the hostage,” Dixon said.
The hostage and officers were not injured in the incident.
The officer who fired his weapon is a three-year veteran of the Denton Police Department and is on administrative leave, pending the conclusion of the investigation.
This story was originally published January 29, 2022 at 6:17 AM.
