Attorney General Janet Mills has concluded that a Maine State Police trooper was justified in using deadly force last summer when he shot and killed a despondent man with a gun in the Penobscot County town of LaGrange.

Lewis Conlogue, 49, had been having an argument with his wife on Aug. 3, 2014, and ordered her to let him out of their moving car or he would jump, according to the attorney general’s report issued Monday. Conlogue, armed with a .22-caliber semiautomatic handgun and having taken four or five anti-anxiety pills, was threatening to shoot himself. Shortly before his wife retreated to safety, he handed her a flower with blood on it, saying it was his DNA, the report said.

State troopers and deputies with the Penobscot County Sheriff’s Office responded.

According to the report, Conlogue held police at bay outside a former restaurant, Island Farm, on Route 16. He repeatedly pointed the gun at the troopers and at himself, and refused commands to drop the gun.

Sgt. Scott Hamilton, a patrol supervisor and assistant commander of the state police tactical team, arrived an hour after the initial 911 call.

Two hours later, Hamilton took up a position 413 feet away from Conlogue. Conlogue continued to point his gun at troopers, who could not retreat from their positions without exposing themselves to further risk, the report said.

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Hamilton fired a single round from his rifle, fatally wounding Conlogue, the report said. Two other troopers said they had just made a similar decision to shoot but had not yet fired, the report said.

After an investigation of the incident, Mills determined that Hamilton was justified in using deadly force because he reasonably believed deadly force was being threatened against him or others, the report said.

The shooting was the fifth officer-involved shooting in Maine in 2014. There was a total of 10 during the year. Six people were shot and killed by officers; the other four shootings resulted in injuries.

From 2000 to December 2012, police in Maine fired their guns at 71 people, striking 57 of them. Thirty-three of those people died. A review of the 57 shootings by the Portland Press Herald/Maine Sunday Telegram in 2012 found that at least 24, or 42 percent, involved people with mental health problems. Seven of the shootings were alcohol-related. Two involved drugs.

Of the 33 people killed, at least 19, or 58 percent, had mental health problems.

 


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