This story was updated at 5:05 p.m. on March 22, 2016.
A Burlington police officer fatally shot a distraught 76-year-old man after a lengthy standoff at his College Street apartment on Monday night, authorities said.
Burlington police, who were summoned to the apartment by a mental crisis worker, tried for five hours to negotiate with Ralph “Phil” Grenon, Vermont State Police said. Around 10 p.m., Grenon approached officers with two knives in his hands and refused to drop them, Vermont State Police said. Officer David Bowers, 23, fired multiple shots at Grenon, who was pronounced dead at the University of Vermont Medical Center.
Bowers, who joined the department in 2014, was placed on paid administrative leave, Burlington Police Chief Brandon del Pozo said during a press conference Tuesday afternoon.
Grenon had been diagnosed with paranoid schizophrenia and was involuntarily medicated in the former Vermont State Hospital several years ago after refusing treatment, according to court records.
Grenon had threatened to kill several neighbors in recent weeks, and local crisis workers had several encounters with him.
“This whole thing started as an effort to deliver services to Mr. Grenon,” del Pozo said. “There are several things we did to bring this to a nonviolent resolution. We deployed every [nonlethal] device in our arsenal. If someone would present me with a perfect plan that could guarantee the safety of him and the officers, we would implement it. If the outcome went well, none of you would have ever known it happened.”
Vermont State Police gave the following account of the shooting:
Around 5 p.m. Monday, a crisis worker from Burlington’s Street Outreach Team, tasked with caring for mentally ill people and calming situations without the help of police, summoned Burlington officers to Grenon’s apartment.
While officers were en route to 101 College Street, police received a call from the building manager who told them that tenants said Grenon was acting in a threatening manner.
Grenon refused to open his door for police. When officers opened it, Grenon stood with knives in each hand, and ignored commands to drop them. Officers fired a stun gun at Grenon, “which was not effective.”
Grenon shut the door and the officers backed away. During the next few hours, officers tried talking to Grenon, but he was unresponsive. Police drilled a hole above the apartment door and inserted a camera, but could not see Grenon.
In order to “check on his welfare,” officers with tactical shields entered the apartment. They found Grenon hiding in the shower with the curtain drawn. When officers pulled back the curtain, they saw he had at least one knife in his hand. Officers backed away and told Grenon to come out. They fired “pepper balls,” projectiles with a chemical irritant, into the bathroom, but Grenon remained in the room.
After a while, officers again entered the bathroom and pulled back the shower curtain. Grenon was holding “two large knives” and began making a thrusting motion with one of them. Officers again fired a stun gun, but Grenon walked toward them with both knives.
Grenon did not speak with officers during the entire encounter. “Not one solitary word,” del Pozo said. “He gave us nothing to go on.” Crisis negotiators on the scene attempted to call Grenon on 12 occasions but he never answered his phone, del Pozo said.
Del Pozo said he was attending firearms training at the Vermont Police Academy in Pittsford last night, but arrived at 8 p.m. to take command of the scene.
State police and the Chittenden County State’s Attorney’s Office will review the shooting.
Burlington police have turned over their body cameras to investigators, state police said. An autopsy is scheduled for later Tuesday.
“We fully support this important exercise of democratic oversight of our use of deadly force,” del Pozo said in a prepared statement. “We expect the full disclosure of facts, identities and evidence as the process of law allows.”
In March 2009, Grenon was charged with misdemeanor unlawful trespass. He allegedly entered a Kinko’s in Burlington and harassed customers for two hours, according to Chittenden Superior Court records. Grenon accused an employee of misplacing documents he said he left in the store, and refused to talk to police officers, according to a police affidavit.
He resisted while officers handcuffed him, and refused to talk to police back at the station, according to the affidavit.
Grenon was sent to the Vermont State Hospital for a psychiatric evaluation in April 2009, and had a guardian ad litem appointed to represent him.
After refusing medication and engaging in “several aggressive episodes in the hospital,” Grenon was involuntarily medicated, psychiatrist Richard Munson wrote in a letter to the court.
“He has schizophrenia … which causes him significant impairment in reality perception, thought process, mood and judgment,” Munson said. “He says he is not ill and that any talk to the contrary shows a conspiracy.” A judge deemed Grenon incompetent to stand trial and ordered him hospitalized for up to 90 days.
His was the second fatal police shooting in Burlington in four months. In December, members of a Drug Enforcement Administration Task Force shot and killed an alleged drug dealer on Elmwood Avenue after he brandished a firearm at them when they entered his apartment.
In November 2013, Burlington police officers killed a mentally ill man who walked toward them with a shovel and refused commands to drop it.
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If they had any decency and self-respect, the Progs on city council should all resign in disgrace for having unanimously imposed this deranged murderer on our city. How about it, Max Tracy? you had lunch with him before his confirmation and bought his lies hook, line and sinker. Shame on you!
Why have Vermont’s candidates been silent about the sociopathic police chief del Pozo. Where’s the “progressive Dave Zuckerman? Where’s Kesha Ram? First he orders cameras turned off before shooting the Colchester man. Then they participate(instigated?) in the drug war assassination of Kenneth Stephens. Now, they murder a 76 yo man in his bathroom. Del Pozo has now unnecessarily killed or seriously injured more people than Donald Trump.The entire do-nothing Burlington “activist” community is complicit in this
I live in the building, and knew the man. We used to have friendly conversations until one day he seemed to have changed, and would no longer be civil. Everyone agreed he had been getting worse this year, and unfortunately wouldn’t take anyone’s advice (or his medicine). We all saw it coming, and hoped he wouldn’t hurt anyone. He didn’t – he just got louder and more offensive. Then he started threatening people. Rent was never the issue. As far as objecting to the way last night’s incident was handled: he wasn’t cowering in his shower, he was yelling at the top of his lungs and waving knives in a confined space. He refused to listen to reason or to calm down. We all wish the situation could have come to a more graceful conclusion. RIP.
How very sad. I cannot believe there was not a better way to handle this.
How is it that multiple stun gun shots and pepper spray failed so miserably at neutralizing a 76-year-old man? Was his adrenalin rush so great that those shots had no effect? Did the police “miss” with those shots? I commend the police for resorting first to non-lethal approaches and attempting to wait the guy out for 5 hours. A sad story that sounds a lot like a “suicide by cop.”
Seems to me that they tried multiple times to use less than lethal force before an officer was charged by a mentally unstable man with at least one knife. I understand that it’s fun to believe in conspiracy theories, but you all need to get a grip.
Judy, he was cowering in the shower. I’m pretty sure the threat of him going “postal” was subdued. The fact that the police are not trained enough to disarm a 76-year-old man who is confined to a bathroom is very unsettling.
Is it true that he was facing eviction? If so, then this murder is even worse. Killed because he couldn’t afford rent?
Egmatic, not true! Did u even read the article or just the headline? He was threatening others in the building and Outreach was called first. When he continued to be threatening is when the police were called in. Would you prefer a “postal” situation where there are 64 other apartments with tenants living there? They worked for almost 5 hours to get a peaceful resolution. No one wants to see anyone get shot and die when they’re having a mental break. Get a clue as you weren’t there and don’t know the situation!
Disgusting. How is it that a person who is only a harm to himself (until police forcefully enter his home) ends up dead at the end of a cop’s gun? Burlington cops certainly seem trigger-happy these days, and in cases where people are actually in their homes. How is it that holding knives or even threatening to hurt oneself is justifiably solved by shooting the person to death? Whether a suspect or a person of concern is armed or not, when the police enter, they create the conditions of a shooting. The police are guilty here, just as they are in any shooting of a mentally ill person or in any no-knock entry. The first people we ought to take the guns from is the police.