GORHAM — A 32-year-old man was shot and killed by a Gorham police officer Friday outside the Burger King on Main Street.
The man was shot while trying to escape from police in a truck, said Marc Malon, a spokesman for the state Attorney General’s Office. The man had used the truck to ram at least one police vehicle. He was shot when it appeared he was going to run over an officer, Malon said.
Police did not identify the man who was shot, but said that he was wanted on warrants. Malon said he did not know as of Friday night what charges the man had been facing, or where his alleged crimes had occurred.
Malon said he did not know the name of the Gorham officer who took the fatal shot. The officer was put on administrative leave pending the outcome of an investigation by the Attorney General’s Office, which is standard in cases in which an officer uses deadly force.
Gorham Police Chief Daniel Jones deferred questions about the shooting to the Attorney General’s Office.
No officers were hurt in the incident, which happened between 4 and 5 p.m. A woman who was with the man at the time of the shooting also was unhurt, Malon said.
The area around the fast-food restaurant on Main Street was taped off Friday night as local police and detectives from the Attorney General’s Office gathered evidence from the scene. The gray pickup truck the man was driving when he was shot wasn’t visible from the road.
A Maine State Police evidence response team arrived at The Village Mall plaza around 8:30 p.m.
Employees who were at work in the nail salon, liquor store and pharmacy next to the Burger King at the time of the shooting said they didn’t even know what had happened behind the plaza until police cruisers began swarming the area and officers knocked on their doors.
Since 1990, the Maine Attorney General’s Office has investigated more than 150 police-involved shootings and never found any to be unjustified.
Comments are not available on this story.
Send questions/comments to the editors.
