AUGUSTA — Maine’s attorney general says a game warden was justified in using deadly force in a shooting last November that killed a part-time police officer.

Forty-six-year-old Eric Richard was fatally shot Nov. 10 by Warden Jeremy Judd after a group of wardens and state troopers found Richard sitting under a tarp in some woods behind his Rumford home. The search team had been called after the potentially suicidal Richard – a part-time police officer as well as a full-time administrative officer for the Rumford Police Department – had ventured into the woods the previous evening with a handgun.

In a report released today, Attorney General William Schneider wrote that Judd fired three rounds after Richard pointed a handgun at Judd and other officers on the search team.