HARTFORD VILLAGE — A call about a disturbance on Paula Street on Thursday led to a physical fight between a Hartford police officer and a man who the officer ultimately shot and killed, according to a news release from Vermont State Police.
Authorities have not identified the person who died but described the individual as a white man in his 30s.
The officer, who also was not identified Thursday, was treated for his injuries and released from the hospital Thursday night, according to the release.
The incident started around 1:30 p.m. Thursday when a resident on Paula Street called police to say a man whom he didn’t know was creating a “disturbance” outside his home, police said.
When a Hartford officer arrived, the man “ignored the officer’s directions,” and ran at him, according to police. The police officer sprayed the man with pepper spray, but it had little effect, according to the news release.
“The subject attacked the officer, and while they were both on the ground, the subject repeatedly punched the officer in the head,” and choked him, the release said.
At some point in the fight, the police officer fired his weapon, hitting and killing the man, according to police.
The officer has been placed on administrative leave, police said. The body of the man who was killed is being taken for an autopsy and a toxicology report at the Medical Examiner’s Office in Burlington.
Detectives and forensic technicians with the Vermont State Police Major Crime Unit and Bureau of Criminal Investigation were examining evidence outside a home at the end of Paula Street a couple hours after the shooting on Thursday afternoon.
Paula Street is a short road with five homes. Access to three driveways at the end of the street was blocked off by police tape.
Hartford police and Vermont State Police vehicles lined the dirt driveway of one of the three homes Thursday afternoon, and police flew a drone over the area as they investigated. A call to the owner of the home was not returned Thursday afternoon.
A gray, two-door Acura with Vermont license plates that was parked at the foot of one of the driveways was marked with police tape and had an evidence marker on its hood. Inside, clothes were strewn around the front passenger’s seat, and a large black box sat in the back.
A neighbor who declined to give her name said she saw a gray car come down the road to the driveway, and that a man got out and went up the driveway, and she heard two shots.
Bob Cushman, a neighbor who lives on Paula Street, just feet from the area police were investigating, said he was at work at the time of the shooting, and he received several messages from friends about a possible incident in his neighborhood. He said he returned to the area to get his dogs out of the house Thursday afternoon.
“There are never any issues,” in the neighborhood, Cushman said. “This is an oddity.”
Across Christian Street, at a house off Hughes Drive, resident Candy Martin said she didn’t hear any gunfire, but she saw a swath of police vehicles drive up Paula Street in the early afternoon, and that the sudden activity created activity for her young goddaughter, who jump into her lap for comfort.
“We heard all this noise,” she said. “They blocked the road and wouldn’t let anyone up.”
Martin said she’s never heard or seen anything suspicious at the house but that the incident makes her concerned, because the area is family-oriented and a lot of children live nearby.
“It’s concerning for our neighborhood,” she said. “Kids here are at an impressionable age.”
Anna Merriman can be reached at amerriman@vnews.com or 603-727-3216.