Witness recalls fatal Burlington police shooting

[Silent_Bob]

http://www.burlingtonfreepress.com/article/20131107/NEWS02/311070048/-It-was-real-quick-witness-says

Michael Butler left his home on Lori Lane in Burlington's New North End and began walking to Hannaford to buy groceries shortly after 4 p.m. Wednesday. He turned right on Randy Lane and walked up the hill.

Something unusual stopped him at a white house near a bend in the road: One of the trees in front had been largely cut down to the base, branches strewn across the yard. He walks by that yard regularly, so he thought the cutting must have happened that day.

He didn't know the family members who lived there, but he'd sometimes see people outside. There was no one in the yard, but he saw a white dog barking in a window.

Then Butler saw two police cars coming down the road.

He would learn later that the cars were from the Burlington Police Department, and he was seeing the beginning of a brief confrontation that left a man dead.

Police were responding to the house after Ruthine "Dolly" Brunette had called to say her son was "acting irrational and destroying property," the Vermont State Police would say Thursday.

"I figured they were just going to talk to the guy for whatever reason they went there for, but I didn't think that he — I didn't see any pressing danger," said Butler, who remembers being the only person out walking. "But at the same time, if you're not looking for something to happen, you could miss it."

Butler kept walking as the police cars parked on either side of the driveway, he recalled Thursday. The next sounds he heard, just a few minutes later, were gunshots.

"Unless there's an echo, it sounded like four to me," Butler said.

Jonah Schulte, who lives several houses away from the shooting, said he also heard four shots. He had been driving behind the police cars on his way home and passed them as they stopped at the house. He heard the shots when he arrived at his house moments later.

Burlington Police Chief Michael Schirling said Brunette had been "wielding a long-handled shovel" and was shot after the officers were unable to convince him to drop the shovel. Schirling said Wednesday that two shots were fired but added Thursday that there might have been more.

Butler was about five to 10 houses down the road at the time, he said. He turned around and walked back toward the house, where he saw the officers with their guns out, telling everybody else to stand back. He saw a man, whom police later identified as 49-year-old Wayne Brunette, sitting on the ground and leaning back with his legs out. Then he fell flat and did not get back up.

"From the time I saw the cops to the shots, it was a pretty much a quick decision — however the decision went that they felt they needed to use their guns," Butler said. "I don't know how much talking they were trying to do. ... It was quick. It was real quick."

Butler crossed the street and continued on his way home. It was overcast and not yet dark. Later he heard sirens, and when he got a ride to the store instead of walking, there was police tape blocking the road.

"I really didn't think they had killed the man," Butler said. He later heard on the news that Brunette had died.

Many neighbors declined to comment Thursday afternoon, but others agreed to an interview. Paul Maynard, who lives across the street a couple houses down on Randy Lane, said he heard three or four shots when he was watching television Wednesday.

"When I came out, one of the cops said, 'Stay on the ground, and help is on the way,'" Maynard said.

Maynard said he never knew Wayne Brunette, whom he described as private, but he described Brunette's parents as "very friendly" neighbors who had lived there for decades.

Three Vermont State Police detectives returned to the yard briefly early Thursday afternoon, kicking around in the leaves to look for additional evidence.

Detective Lt. Bob Cushing declined to comment about whether the tree had been related to the disturbance that prompted the the original call to police.

"That tree was freshly cut," Cushing said.

After the detectives left, a florist's van was parked in front of the house, where police said Brunette had lived in an upstairs apartment. One shred of yellow police crime-scene tape was caught in the bare branches of a tree across the street, the last evidence of a wide taped-off area set up in the aftermath of the night before.

[KBCraig]

Yet another case of calling the police and losing someone you love.

That very short time before shots were fired is typical. That's what happens when police are trained that they're in a combat zone, that everyone they encounter is a threat to their life, and that anything less than instantaneous obedience constitutes "resistance" that might mean they don't go home safe at night.

I certainly don't defend my profession; I despise it, and I understand why my freedom loving friends despise it as well.

But, this kind of crap doesn't happen when "the PO-lice" are outnumbered 150:1 in open units and aren't armed with anything more than a radio. People skills count for more than brute strength; we hire fast food shift managers, not bouncers.