INDIANAPOLIS — A Noblesville man is talking with 13News about what he said he witnessed in the moments before and after an IMPD officer shot and killed a man at a truck stop on the southwest side of Indianapolis Thursday night.
According to IMPD, officers went there Nov. 30 after a 911 call about a woman inside a semi's cab screaming.
IMPD said one officer who got inside the truck's cab found a man inside, telling the officer that he had a knife to the woman's throat. According to police, that officer shot the man once, killing him.
Police said the woman who was inside the truck had several cuts from what they said was a sharp blade. She was treated at the scene and then interviewed by police.
The woman's grandmother told 13News on the phone that her granddaughter was still pretty shook up but was recovering. The woman said her granddaughter was thankful for the officer who made his way into that semi cab and believes he saved her life.
13News talked with Jason Still, who was nearby when it all went down.
"Nothing really surprises me, and I don't put anything past anyone," said Still, but he wasn't expecting a reported hostage situation to unfold right in front of him when he went into a McDonald's at a south side truck stop Thursday night.
"I got in there. Everybody's pressed up against the big-picture window," Still recalled, explaining a semi parked outside was their focus, with people telling him a woman was inside the truck's cab, screaming.
"As I started looking out the window, that's when police all showed up," Still said.
According to IMPD, officers heard the woman's screams, too, and surrounded the truck.
"They made announcements for anybody in the truck to come out using the PA system of one of the patrol cars," IMPD Assistant Police Chief Christopher Bailey said.
When that didn't happen, Bailey said an officer broke the driver's side window to see and hear inside the truck better, and then opened the door, asking a man inside what his name was, with the officer giving the man his name, too.
"He was attempting to build a rapport with this individual, and the individual kept saying he had a knife to the woman's throat," Bailey said as the woman was still screaming and pleading for help.
That's when Bailey said the officer got into the semi's cab and ordered the man to stop.
"You can briefly see on the body cam, the individual on top of the woman," Bailey said, explaining that's when the officer shot the man once, killing him inside the cab.
"This officer saved a woman's life," Bailey said.
"She looked distraught, but she didn't look injured in any life-threatening type of way," said Still, who says he watched police take the woman out of the semi cab and sit her on the curb.
According to police, medics treated her injuries at the scene before taking her downtown to talk to detectives.
Still said he also saw police bring the man out of the semi. At that point, Still didn't realize he'd been shot, explaining that he didn't hear a gunshot.
"They had him handcuffed," Still said.
"Looking back, I guess he was lifeless, but it looked like he was giving up, like, not fighting the police, but they were dragging him by the tips of his toes and laid him on the other side of a police car," Still recalled.
Thursday night's police shooting was the 17th this year for IMPD, the ninth since August and the 10th this year where someone has died.
"Each of these situations are dependent on the circumstances that are known to the officer," Bailey said, explaining that IMPD is aware of the community's concerns about the number of officer-involved shootings this year.
In August, the Concerned Clergy of Indianapolis called for IMPD Chief Randal Taylor's resignation, along with an outside agency to come in and take a look at the number of shootings and their frequency since this past August.
In late October, Taylor said he'd be open to that happening.
After Thursday night's shooting, 13News asked Bailey where the department was in that process.
"The chief will make the final decision. We haven't gotten all the proposals that we've asked for, so that's an ongoing process. It's not something that's going to happen quickly," Bailey said.
"It's got to be more than lip service and a check-off-the-box approach, and it's got to get to the heart and the culture of the police agency," said James Copple, the director of Act Now, an organization that does listening sessions around the country with communities and police officers on police reform and what community members say they want to see from their police departments.
Copple has spent 20 years working in crime prevention and organizing task forces on policing and reform.
In the past two years, Copple said Act Now has held listening sessions with 1,500 police officers and more than 3,000 community members about police reform and use of force.
"Every situation is just that. It's situational. We'd be very naïve to assume that there are not justified uses of force in all of our communities," Copple said.
When it comes to what happened Thursday night with the latest shooting, Copple said from all that he's read about how it happened, the officer did the right thing.
"They saved her life," Copple said of the woman who in the truck.
What comes next, said Copple, is also important.
"It's how you approach these things and how you then evaluate and really engage in the community in reflecting on what just took place," Copple said.
After police-involved shootings involving an IMPD officer, two parallel investigations take place.
One is internal, conducted by IMPD. The executive staff of IMPD will be briefed on that investigation.
The other is criminal and handled by the Critical Incidence Response Team, who will present their findings to the prosecutor's office.
Once the criminal investigation is complete, the civilian majority use of force review board will review both investigations and make recommendations to the chief on whether policy, procedures and officer training were followed in the incident.
"The sooner and more transparent you can be, the greater the trust is built between the community and law enforcement," Copple said. "It sounds like the Indianapolis (Metropolitan) Police Department has put in place those mechanisms to get citizen input and evaluation."
13News reached out via email to an IMPD spokesperson Friday to ask about when the public could expect an outside agency to come in and look at this year's police-involved shootings.
We were told, via email, "We do not have any updates to provide."