Centralia police say Officer Phil Weismiller caught up to the subject who was attempting to scale a fence on Elm Street.
Updated at 9:22 p.m.
By Sharyn L. Decker
Lewis County Sirens news reporter
CENTRALIA – A Centralia police officer shot and killed a man last night in a residential neighborhood after a confrontation that began when another officer attempted to contact the individual spotted behind a closed business.
It happened around 2:20 a.m. in an area just east of the Interstate 5 interchange at Mellen Street.
Police say the subject had displayed a knife and said he had a gun during the first encounter and had a knife in his hand during a subsequent encounter about a block away.
The deceased is 48 years old carrying an identification card, from Arizona, according to the Centralia Police Department. His name was not released.
Officers remained on the scene this morning conducting an investigation, along with the Washington State Patrol, at the 1200 block of Elm Street where it ended, according to a police spokesperson.
Police spokesperson Officer Patricia Finch said as she understood, an officer was on routine patrol and observed a suspicious person behind Fiddler’s Coffee on Mellen Street. Officers keep an eye out for potential burglars, she said. Officer Tracy Murphy tried to contact the male, who ignored Murphy and walked away, according to Finch.
Murphy in his patrol car followed him across the street to near the shuttered former King Solomon’s Restaurant building, according to police. Police say that’s where the male showed Murphy the knife, said he had a firearm, and then refused to drop the knife.
According to Finch, the male ran and was pursued on foot by the arriving second officer.
Officer Phil Weismiller met up with the male 100 to 200 yards away.
“(T)he male stopped and confronted the officer, holding a knife in his hand,” police stated in a morning news release. “At one point during the confrontation, the male was shot by the officer.”
The whole event happened within a matter of moments, Finch said.
Medics responded but the man was dead at the scene.
The commotion was frightening for residents of the short dead-end street.
Twenty-year-old Kassie Kohler said she and her mother were asleep on couches in their living room when her teenage brother alerted them he heard gunshots outside his window, she said.
“He Army-crawled from his room to the living room yelling, get down, get down,” she said.
When they finally got the nerve to look out a window, Kohler said she saw a patrol car parked on the lawn between their house and the neighbor to the west, headlights pointed toward the back corner of where the house met with a back fence.
It wasn’t 10 minutes, she said, before there were a dozen police and aid vehicles lining the street.
Police Chief Bob Berg offered more details as the day wore on.
Weismiller arrived in his patrol vehicle to assist Murphy and exited at the northeast corner of the restaurant property where access to Elm Street is barricaded. Murphy drove around to the intersection of Elm and Marsh Avenue to block that route, according to Berg.
Weismiller chased the subject and caught up with him in between two houses where he was unsuccessfully attempting to scale a fence, Berg wrote.
“At that point the subject, still armed with a knife, confronted Officer Weismiller and after refusing commands to drop the knife, the subject was shot,” Berg wrote.
The chief didn’t note how many rounds were fired. No details describing the knife were released.
Kohler said she counted 13 yellow numbered markers on the ground as law enforcement officers examined the scene.
Finch said she didn’t know if the deceased was just passing through town or had relocated here. Police would not reveal his identity until after his family is notified, she said.
Weismiller has been placed on administrative leave as is standard procedure, according to police. Weismiller, 34, has been with the department for a year and a half, coming from the Kelso Police Department where he worked about four years.
He is a former captain in the U.S. Army who has served tours in the Middle East, police said.
Murphy is a 17-year veteran of the department.
The Centralia Police Department requested assistance from what is known as the Region Three Critical Incident Investigation Team, a group of officers from surrounding agencies who look into such incidents.
A records check shows the deceased has arrest and conviction data in Washington, Oregon, Arizona and New Mexico, according to police.
Lewis County Coroner Warren McLeod said the man’s next-of-kin have been notified, but he won’t release the name until his identity is confirmed tomorrow through finger prints.
The team of detectives from the Thurston, Lewis, Pacific, Grays Harbor, and Mason County sheriffs’ offices are expected to complete their work within the next three weeks, according to Berg.
Their findings will go to the Lewis County prosecutor to review the actions of Weismiller for a decision regarding any criminal charges. Once that side of the matter is resolved, an internal use of force review board will convene in accordance with Centralia Police Department policy, according to the chief.
A team consisting of detectives from the Thurston, Lewis, Pacific, Grays Harbor, and Mason County Sheriffs’ Offices conducting the investigation into the officer-involved shooting on Elm Street is expected to complete its work within the next three weeks.
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The other side of the fence at the house on Elm Street.
Tags: By Sharyn L. Decker, news reporter
dont matter -You’re right, I apologize, it’s not your spelling, it’s your grammar, syntax, capitalization. sentence structure and punctuation. Otherwise you’re a literary genius.
And btw…sometimes, one bullet isn’t enough, truth be told usually one bullet isn’t enough.. Hopefully that is something you will never have to live through in your life (unless you want to enlist), but if you doubt my word, go find some youngsters who’ve served in Iraq or Afghanistan, especially some grunts who served in a place where they were in close, nose to nose with the bad guys, like Ramadi, Mosul, Fallujah or the Kunar Province, Wanat or any of the other myriad of places where our dismounts were in contact with bad guys every day and they will tell you most of the time, one bullet isn’t enough, and we’re talking about rifle rounds. Knowing that, what makes you think it would be any different with a pistol?
Because one bullet just isnt enough.
WE NEED A MEMORIAL STATUE FOR THE SLAIN CITIZENS OF LEWIS COUNTY!
whats happening in europe is coming here. gun control, round abouts, legal marijuana and soon legal prostitution. God save the usa and our ‘ignorant’ ways. You city planner, ex military, police cheerleaders are forcing this down our throats. I dont fear the law, but i do fear police corruption. this locale is famous for it. This will be a jutified righteous kill it doesnt matter what the citizens say. I just hope their enough people who can see through the red tape and see these blood suckers for what they are. They might to put up another statue to show the people the exact opposite of what they really are.
a police a dog and the child? more the like the dog taking a chunk outta that same childs ass when he turns 14 and then taking a paid vacation for two weeks during a internal review. AHhh the irony. discretion to shoot or not shoot live or die is the power of firearm (the power of god). They just have full protection of your tax payers dollars for a defence. what a cluster. all engineered by lawyers and police and people trying to grow the govt. like you greg. your a sheep on the govt farm that aint worth its food. but u keep pooping adding to the stentch
I spelled everything right. Yes eff the police trying to take away my freedom. They should strike down the 20 ft law too many people getting shot. hell take away cops guns all together. THE WHOLE COUNTRY OF FRANCE IS VIRTUALLY GUN FREE. know your facts old sheep. The guy was walking down the street why the hell does he have to stop and get anal probed just to clear his name. If i was in a shitty mood. Paris cops say run. because if they cant catch you its not their problem.
GregtheCelt…My USMC-Ret Husband asked me to respond to you with this: “OohRah! Thank You for Your Service & Semper Fi”
@don’t matter: Man you are al over the place, but I will try to help you out so next time you post you won’t sound like such an idiot…First; All cops in France carry guns. It’s the cops in Great Britain aka England or the “UK” that don’t. And actually there are more and more units with in the UK police forces that are armed because violent crime is up over there…what with gun control and all. Second, the guy who got shot wasn’t “walking down the street” he ran from the police, after displaying a knife.
Everyone keeps calling it a “pocket knife” well, I have a Marine Corps G10 folding knife. Technically it’s a pocket knife, but it has a 4.5 inch blade. If I can get within arms length of you I will make you bleed with it. A lot. Btw don’t bother writing back about what a badass you are. Don’t assume you understand anything about fighting people up close because you got into a drunken brawl with some other toothless moron in a bar or traded blows with your equally brain dead kin at an after dinner thanksgiving soiree, like you do every year. Any knife even an Old Timer single blade pocket knife like my grandpa’s will kill you,
You can try to down play what the bad guy didi in this case, try and trash the cops, throw up some false flag Constitutional argument (you should actually read it though, it’s a good place to start) but none of it will really help. Your biggest problem is you can’t spell worth a damn, your knowledge of the law is either tainted by jail house logic or just plain ignorance and you have an obvious bias against the police, which leads one to believe your just another one of those a**hole who despises authority for the sake of being contrary. So, any thing you put on these pages lacks integrity or credibility, therefore why should we take you seriously?
Your comment about a police officer’s “discretion to kill” that is brilliant; I do’t know what freaking universe you live in but there is no special power granted to law enforcement that give them the discretion to kill some one. I can’t think of anyone that would want it. The discretionary power to decide who lives and dies…that is some awesome responsibility. Given the way you feel about the police, you should be really happy they do not actually have that power. If they did, me thinks we would not be having this debate. You would have been on someone’s discretionary list long ago…or maybe, because of that possibility you would not be so opinionated. So be thankful you are mistaken in that regard.
Finally: “the twenty foot rule applies to a combat zone” lets see if you can grasp this Buckwheat – I can attest to the different kind of combat zones in the world… I was a deputy sheriff in one of the busiest beats in the worst parts of Riverside County. I also retired as a Master Gunnery Sergeant (0311-Infantry) in the Marine Corps Reserves after 25 years and served tours in Desert Storm, Somalia, Kosovo, Iraq (2) including the Battle of Fallujah, Afghanistan(2) and other overseas tours. A combat zone is where ever YOUR fight is taking place. I don’t care if that is a second floor hallway in Fallujah, across a draw in the hills of the Watapur Valley, or in a ten foot square patch of grass on a yard in Centralia, when your time comes geography is the last of your problems, oh, that and whether or not some ignorant malcontent is going to talk s**t about you and accuse you of murder.
But hey “dont matter” it don’t matter because you have no freaking clue what i am talking about…right? Right, thats what I thought. D**k head.
I detest police corruption in every form and fasion re: Jennifer B: You obviously weren’t picked on by a certain person from high school who later became an ‘officer of the law’. If you had, you might be able to sympathise. You’ve obviously never had a gun pointed to your head by someone you thought might be a ‘friend’.
All you saw was a bully doing his best to hide the reality of his f’d up personality flaws.
I didn’t play sports so being picked last wasn’t even an issue. I preferred skateboarding and punk rock over organized sports.
And it wasn’t just one particular person i went to high school who acted as if he was better than every one else. A lot of stupid jocks did the same shit.
You were obviously part of that crowd that does everything they can to conform to everything the jocks and ‘popular people’ want them to be.
First of all, this shooting had nothing to do with “Race.” If you live in Washington, Lewis Co. The U.S. wherever, if a police officer asks you to stand down or drop a weapon, you do EXACTLY that. We want to put faith in our protection and the justice system. We want to feel safe in the protection they provide us they question and degrade the manner in which they provide it. These men & women who serve have been highly trained to diffuse these harmful situations with the least amount of risk to everyone involved, INCLUDING the criminal. Make no mistake, pulling a knife on Anyone is a crime. Threatening with deadly force is a crime. It is sad for this family that has lost a loved one. Life is made of choices, for reasons no one will ever know, this person chose to do these things.
So, all of you bashing the officers who leave their families everyday to provide you with protection, you might want to STEP OFF and wait for all the details to be revealed through this justice system that seems to serve a purpose for you when needed.
THE END