Suspect killed at Durham Police station identified as 19-year-old
DURHAM, N.C. (WTVD) -- An investigation is underway into a deadly shooting inside the Durham Police Department headquarters on East Main Street.
The incident happened shortly before 6 p.m. on Wednesday.
What police are saying
According to Durham Police Chief Patrice Andrews, a suspect in a homicide investigation was being questioned at the police station when the shooting occurred. After the interview wrapped up, officers were securing him for transport. She said that's when he lunged forward and gained full control of an officer's gun. The officer and the suspect got into a struggle, which ended when the suspect was shot.
He was taken to a hospital, where he later died. The SBI has identified the suspect as 19-year-old Joshua Farmer.
The police chief said that based on the preliminary investigation, "the suspect fired the shot from the gun that was in his control."
No officers were injured.
Just minutes after the incident took place, ABC11 was on scene as crime scene tape was wrapped around the side of DPD headquarters and an ambulance pulled out of a loading dock at the building with a police escort.
The incident was captured on cameras inside the police department.
What's still unknown
ABC11 asked police whether they believe this was a suicide attempt on the part of the suspect in custody, but they wouldn't comment on the investigation, saying it's ongoing.
It's not clear what homicide Farmer was being questioned in connection with.
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Andrews said she has reviewed much of the camera video of the incident.
"I am not in the business of speculating, I am not in the business of assuming," Andrews said. "We work on facts and facts alone, and so, therefore, we will wait until everything is in, all of the investigation is done before making any further statements."
WATCH | Chief Andrews Full News Briefing
Andrews said DPD's thoughts were with the family of the man killed and the officers who she said would be forever changed by the incident.
The North Carolina State Bureau of Investigation is investigating the incident, which is standard procedure. The DPD Professional Standards Division will also investigate the incident.
What is DPD's gun policy?
ABC11 has been pressing Durham Police for answers for the past 24 hours about what exactly transpired inside that interrogation room and how the situation escalated.
On Thursday night, we connected with Police Chief Patrice Andrews outside a DPD event in Research Triangle Park, where she said Farmer was not handcuffed in the room as that interrogation took place, but that he had been handcuffed previously and that officers were preparing to handcuff him again when the struggle began. We asked Andrews if the department's policy on guns in the interrogation room might be reviewed in the wake of the incident, but she said it wouldn't be since she didn't believe any policy had been violated.
DPD's current policy states that "officers may wear department-approved weapons in the interview rooms if the weapon is secured in an approved holster."
ABC11 spoke with Jason Armstrong, the former Chief of Police in Apex, who now works as a police consultant. He said generally, his department avoided guns in interview rooms where a suspect wasn't handcuffed, but that the situation becomes more fluid when police are in the process of putting cuffs back on a suspect, as DPD said was the case Wednesday night.
"When we bring them into the interview room, they're normally taken out of handcuffs....And that's primarily why the officers or the investigators that are speaking with them normally do not have any weapons on them," Armstrong said.
We asked Armstrong about whether or not more departments should review their policies on guns in front of uncuffed suspects, but he said it isn't that simple, and that encounters between police and a homicide suspect are inherently risky.
"There's no policy that can ... take that away or say that, that there would never be a situation where what happened. Yesterday cannot be possible if somebody is just very intent on making that effort," Armstrong said.
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