Black Police Officer Not Charged For Killing Woman Who Called Him The N‑Word And Charged At Him With Scissors

Bossier, LA — Police Officer Patrick Edmonds Jr., who is Black, fatal­ly shot Shannon Rupert, a 45-year old white woman, in a Louisiana hotel after she threat­ened and tried to attack him with a pair of scis­sors while scream­ing racial slurs at him. Edmonds, how­ev­er, has been cleared of any wrong­do­ing. On October 25^th, Edmonds respond­ed to a 911 call report­ing an inci­dent at LaQuinta Inn in Bossier where Rupert was walk­ing around the lob­by with a pair of scis­sors while scream­ing on the phone.

A dis­turb­ing video of the inci­dent showed Rupert threat­en­ing the police offi­cer, who was try­ing to stop her. Edmonds can be heard repeat­ed­ly ask­ing Rupert to put down the pair of scis­sors she had been bran­dish­ing to oth­er peo­ple in a hotel lob­by, but Rupert refused.

“You’re going to have to shoot me, n — –. You’re not tak­ing them. Shoot me,” Rupert said before charg­ing towards Edmonds with scis­sors in her hands.

Edmonds shot her twice, killing her. The local police depart­ment said that after the body­cam footage was reviewed, Edmonds was cleared from any wrong­do­ings in con­nec­tion to the incident.

In a state­ment, the District Attorney also stat­ed that Edmonds did not com­mit a crime as “his actions con­sti­tut­ed jus­ti­fi­able homi­cide.” He has been placed on admin­is­tra­tive leave pend­ing the result of the inves­ti­ga­tion by the Internal Affairs Division.

Meanwhile, Melinda Peterson, Rupert’s cousin, was ques­tion­ing why the police offi­cer had to use lethal force and not use a taser instead. But Peterson admit­ted that Rupert had been using ille­gal drugs for long.

“I knew she had been into drugs real­ly bad. I tried help­ing her. I tried talk­ing to her to see if maybe we could get her some help, a recourse. Getting her into rehab or any­thing like that. She was just out of it,” Peterson told KSLA 12.