Mentally ill New York man fatally shot by police

Nov 16, 2016

A mentally ill man was shot and killed by police after first being hit with a beanbag round.

Kenneth Chamberlain, a retired corrections officer and former Marine, was hit in the back with the beanbag round fired by Sgt. Keith Martin before he was killed by Officer Anthony Carelli, according to Westchester County Chief Medical Examiner Kunjlata Ashar’s testimony on Tuesday.

Martin testified that he had show Chamberlain in the shoulder in his attempt to get Chamberlain to drop a knife, while Carelli said that he took the fatal shot in order to protect Martin from Chamberlain.

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Police had been called for a routine check on Chamberlain’s welfare when his medical alert pendent accidentally went off before he became agitated and begged police to leave, leading to a 90-minute standoff. During the standoff, a police officer in the hallway used a racial epithet, which was captured by Chamberlain’s medical alert system.

In a $21 million federal wrongful death lawsuit, Chamberlain’s family is claiming that he was shot while on the floor or just getting up, but a grand jury declined to indict Carelli in 2012.