Reno County district attorney rules fatal police shooting of Hutchinson woman justified
The top prosecutor cleared an unnamed officer after a standoff with a 50-year-old woman armed with a scoped air rifle
HUTCHINSON, Kan. — Reno County District Attorney Thomas R. Stanton, a Republican, ruled Thursday that a Hutchinson police officer was legally justified in the fatal shooting of 50-year-old Cassondra Scott during a neighborhood standoff on March 29. According to the prosecutor's report, officers responded shortly after 9 p.m. to the 200 block of West 28th Avenue after Scott called 911 to threaten that she was going to randomly shoot her neighbors and arriving police. When five officers arrived at the scene, Scott repeatedly pointed what appeared to be a scoped hunting rifle at them and aggressively advanced on their positions, ignoring repeated commands to disarm. After about 2 1/2 minutes of unsuccessful attempts to verbally de-escalate the situation, one officer fired two shots from his rifle, striking Scott once in the abdomen.
Scott, who had a history of arrests in Hutchinson, was treated by emergency medical services at the scene and transported to a Wichita hospital, where she later died from her injuries. Investigators with the Kansas Bureau of Investigation recovered the weapon at the scene and determined it was an all-black air rifle equipped with a scope, which Stanton noted was indistinguishable from a lethal firearm in the dark conditions. Officers had previously responded to Scott's residence at 5:52 p.m. that same day after she threatened to point a gun at police to provoke them into shooting her. In his final report clearing the officer of any criminal wrongdoing, Stanton concluded the officer acted on an objectively reasonable belief that deadly force was necessary to protect law enforcement and the neighborhood's residents from imminent death or great bodily harm.
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