Scott Garvey and his big brother Shawn filled their four-day road trip from Memphis to Vermont with sprawling conversations about their family, and music. Each night they’d cram into a motel room with Scott’s drumset, his two rescue dogs — Vinnie and Lulu — and his parakeet.
Scott was moving to Putney to be closer to his sister after five years down south. As the brothers made their 1,300-mile trek in a slightly beat up 2005 Toyota Camry, they played Noah Kahan on repeat to get in the Vermont spirit.
When they arrived in Putney, Shawn spent a few nights in town helping get the new apartment ready. He set up Scott’s drums, and put together a little backyard garden area for their mom, who’d be living with Scott.
As Shawn left Vermont, he handed his little brother a handwritten letter.
“I need you to get help here,” it said. “I need you to trust the system.”
Scott, 55, had struggled with bipolar disorder and schizophrenia for much of his adult life. He was moving to Vermont in part because his family thought he’d have access to better mental health care.
His two siblings also wanted their 84-year-old mother, who had lived with Scott for the past 30 years, to have more help caring for Scott. So his younger sister Kara Garvey, a schoolteacher in Dummerston, got to work. She found Scott and their mother an apartment in Putney, just a five-minute drive from her house. She started to make calls to HCRS, the local community mental health agency, to get Scott connected to treatment and counseling.
“I was like, ‘Scott, we're gonna start a new life. I have so many plans for going to the Red Sox. We're gonna go listen to music together. We're gonna walk together,’” Kara said in a recent interview.
But just a week after Scott arrived in Vermont, while in the middle of a mental health crisis, he was shot and killed by a state trooper inside the apartment he and his mother had just moved into. They hadn’t even finished unpacking all the boxes.
Vermont State Police say that earlier in the day Scott had made threatening comments and scared his neighbors.
After an hours-long standoff, troopers entered Scott’s house. Police say Scott was holding an object they believed was a firearm. When he didn’t respond to their commands, one of the officers shot and killed him, according to police. No firearms were found in the house.
Vermont State Police declined to comment, citing the ongoing investigation into the shooting.
You do not kill somebody that was reaching out for help.Kara Garvey, sister of Scott Garvey
Scott’s death is the latest in a long-standing pattern of Vermont police shootings of people in the midst of a mental health crisis. The state has tried to prevent these situations by adding training requirements for police, embedding social workers in law enforcement agencies, and passing a new law limiting when police can use force.
Some mental health advocates, like state Rep. Anne Donahue, said the results have been mixed.
“I've seen some where you can see, ‘Wow, they really knew how to handle it, to de-escalate,’” Donahue said in a recent interview. “And then other situations where it just seems like, you know, why are we repeating the same old mistakes?”
The Garveys said they have questions about how Vermont State Police responded to their brother. They said they’d told police that Scott didn’t own any guns or other weapons and that he was physically disabled and using a walker. They wonder why troopers didn’t let Kara approach the house and try to calm her brother.
“The whole thing was an epic failure,” Kara said. “You do not kill somebody that was reaching out for help.”
‘As he was playing I’d be dancing upstairs.’
Sitting at a picnic table in Montpelier about two and a half weeks after Scott died, his mother, Judy Garvey, and his two siblings recalled his penchant for music. He started playing drums when he was about 12, practicing for hours every day.
“When Scott played, it was magical,” said Kara.
In Portland, Oregon, where Scott and his mother lived for about 15 years, he bought yards of burlap to soundproof the basement so he could hold band practice without disturbing the neighbors. It didn’t completely block the music, but Judy didn’t mind.
“I used to love it,” she said. “As he was playing I’d be dancing upstairs.”
Scott, whose only income was a $900 monthly disability check, was always generous, his family said. In Memphis, he’d hand out scarves and socks to the homeless around Christmas, pick up trash at public parks and help at a domestic violence shelter, Judy said.
Scott also volunteered at the humane society, where he went out of his way to pamper the dogs that got the least attention, his sister said.
“He felt so bad for the dogs that weren't walked as much,” Kara said. “And so it was his job to pay attention to them and love them more.”
Scott was a prolific writer of poems, songs and postcards as well. He’d send notes to his family and friends all over the country, signing each one with a drawing of a stick figure playing the drums.
Kara pulled out one of the many postcards she’d received from Scott and began reading it out loud. Scott, writing from inside a psych facility, told Kara he was happy she was going to creative writing classes.
“Life is short, life is a gift, especially after being in a psych ward and sometimes homeless. Eat it up,” Scott wrote.
Scott’s mental health challenges first appeared in his 20s, primarily as mania and depression, Shawn said. He spent years in and out of psychiatric facilities. Earlier this year, Scott was hospitalized for five weeks after being beaten inside a Memphis mental health facility, his family said.
Scott suffered three brain bleeds from the alleged assault and lost a lot of mobility, forcing him to use a walker to move around, according to his family.
In April, as Scott was recovering, the Garveys decided he and Judy should move to Vermont.
“I just buckled down and searched for a place for them to live,” Kara said. “And we found a place.”
‘Screaming for Help’
In late June, Scott and Judy, along with Scott’s two rescue dogs and parakeet, started to settle into their new apartment at Putney Landing, a housing complex run by Windham and Windsor Housing Trust. Kara had been working to set Scott up with mental health support, and during his first few days in Vermont he met with a peer advocate from HCRS.
But the transition to Vermont was tough for Scott. He was paranoid and fearful, and his behavior started to escalate.
On July 6, a week after he arrived, Scott set off the fire extinguisher in the apartment, his family said. Firefighters who responded unsuccessfully tried to persuade Scott to go to the hospital.
That evening, a mental health screener spoke to Scott over the phone and determined that, while he was not suicidal or homicidal, he suffered from “auditory hallucinations and schizophrenia,” the police records say.
VSP did not send any troopers to the scene that evening. They called Kara in nearby Dummerston, and she said they told her Scott had been talking about "suicide by cop" to the mental health screener, so they were staying away.
He was screaming for help. You know, metaphorically screaming, but he was just reaching out for help.Kara Garvey, sister of Scott Garvey
The next morning, on July 7, Kara picked up her mother at Putney Landing and brought Judy to her house. She said Scott was “still very afraid” and had piled cardboard boxes in front of the door. Kara called the HCRS crisis line that morning, and so did Scott.
“He was screaming for help,” Kara said. “You know, metaphorically screaming, but he was just reaching out for help.”
Court documents reveal a situation that steadily escalated, hour by hour.
According to a police affidavit, Scott also called the state police that morning, telling dispatch that he’d been in an altercation with a neighbor and was concerned there were people in the woods with guns.
Around 11:15 a.m., one of Scott’s neighbors called state police and told them that Scott was banging on her windows with a metal pole, saying that “the voices are telling him to kill everyone.”
Trooper Mark Pepperman, along with an embedded mental health worker, drove to Putney Landing. Scott was “aggravated and was yelling at us,” and “expressed he planned to commit suicide by police,” Pepperman wrote in a police affidavit.
Kara returned to Putney Landing around 2 p.m. to give police the key to the apartment. She said she told troopers at the scene that Scott was “deathly afraid of you.”
Kara said she asked the troopers if she could try to talk to her brother through the door. The troopers said “no.”
According to Kara, the troopers told her they were close to getting Scott to come out. She left thinking “everything was all set.”
But inside the apartment, Scott called state police dispatch again to “advise that 2 VSP officers are trying to kill him,” the police affidavit says. More troopers came to the scene. Scott refused to speak to them and started throwing items out the second story window, the affidavit says.
Around 4 p.m., Kara received a call from Scott. He told her that a woman was going to come talk to him, without cops, and that she was going to bring him some coffee and cigarettes.
“I think it’s gonna be OK,” he told her.
Fifteen minutes later, at 4:03 p.m., a judge approved a request from state police to search Scott’s house and arrest him for criminal threatening and disorderly conduct.
At 4:32 p.m., troopers entered the apartment. Scott was in a dimly lit room, according to the police affidavit, and when Trooper Peter Romeo shined his light on Scott, he saw what he thought was a rifle.
According to body camera footage described in the affidavit, troopers began ordering the person inside the house to show them his hands and "put it down.” A man’s voice is heard saying "shoot me in the head," and after repeated orders to show his hands, several gunshots are heard.
Romeo had opened fire.
Then an unnamed trooper on the footage said, "He had a rifle." Another trooper asked, "He had a rifle?"
Two minutes after police entered Scott’s house, EMS was called to the scene, the affidavit says.
It took another two hours for police to tell Scott’s family that he had been shot, Kara said.
Police found a metal pipe in the house, but no firearms, according to court records.
Attorney General Charity Clark and another county prosecutor will review the incident to determine if the use of force was justified. A spokesperson for Clark declined to comment, citing the ongoing investigation.
Romeo, the trooper who shot Scott, is on paid administrative leave, a standard procedure after a police shooting.
The same story
Scott’s death is the most recent in a string of Vermont police shootings involving people in a mental health crisis over the years, including in 2013, when a Burlington police officer shot and killed Wayne Brunette, a mentally ill man who police say advanced at them with a shovel. Phil Grenon, a 76-year-old man in the midst of a psychotic break, was fatally shot by Burlington Police in 2016 when he jumped out of a shower holding a knife. Benjamin Gregware told police in 2018 he intended to “end it” and emerged from his car with a gun to his own head before police shot and killed him. And David Johnson was shot in the leg in 2022 after running towards an officer with a knife. He later told investigators he didn’t want to hurt anyone, he just wanted the police to kill him.
“We react to crises after the fact, and we're not preventative in our approach to caring for people,” said Lindsey Owen, the executive director of Disability Rights Vermont. “We let people get as bad as they can get, and then we try and fix a problem after it's ended.”
Nationally, 23% of all police shootings involve a person with mental or behavioral health conditions, according to a recent study from the Johns Hopkins Center for Gun Violence Solutions and Vanderbilt University. The researchers also found that 67% of all shootings involving someone suffering a mental health crisis were fatal.
We react to crises after the fact, and we're not preventative in our approach to caring for people.Lindsey Owen, executive director, Disability Rights Vermont
In Vermont there have been efforts to address this trend. Police officers in the state are required by law to be trained in handling people with mental health issues. In recent years, more agencies, including state police, have hired social workers to respond to mental health calls. A state commission was formed in 2017 to review incidents in which a person in a mental health crisis is seriously injured or killed by police. And a 2020 law established a higher bar for when police can use force and required them to take a person’s mental illness into account when making that decision.
Rep. Donahue, who pushed for the new use-of-force policy, said in a recent interview she’s not sure it’s led to any change in outcomes.
“The issue always was, and I wasn't sure the statute would really address it, is … in the very moment where deadly force is used, it's almost always justifiable,” Donahue said. “But the question is, how did it get to that moment, and could that have been avoided?”
There’s been at least one case in the state where a police officer was charged with using excessive force against a person in a mental health crisis, but in general, Vermont police officers rarely face criminal charges for using force on duty.
To become a fully certified law enforcement officer in Vermont, recruits receive eight hours of classroom training on how to respond to mental health calls, as well as 16 hours of de-escalation training — compared to 40 hours of firearms training and 54 hours on use of force and tactics, according to the police academy.
But Ken Hawkins, deputy director of the Vermont Police Academy, said those hours don’t account for all the ways the academy weaves mental health response into training, like in-person scenarios that new recruits have to navigate. One scenario is a welfare check where a person is being “loud, boisterous, non-communicative,” Hawkins said.
“The expectation is that the recruits will be able to respond and de-escalate, provide appropriate services and render aid where necessary,” he said.
Police are required to complete a minimum of 30 hours of annual training, which must include first aid and firearms qualification. There is no statewide requirement for police to receive annual training on mental health calls, though some local departments require it, Hawkins said.
But for Robert Fortunati, whose mentally ill son was killed by state police in Corinth in 2006, it can be hard to feel like new policies and training will change anything.
“It’s never going to get better,” Fortunati said in a recent phone interview. “The more laws they make, the worse things get.”
Fortunati’s son Joseph, who suffered from bipolar disorder and schizophrenia, was fatally shot after police said Joseph pulled his gun from his waistband and pointed it at the troopers. The family has disputed the troopers’ account.
The officers never faced criminal charges — and some even received commendations.
Nearly two decades from Joseph’s death, his father said it’s been distressing to see similar stories play out.
“Most of these guys that are the victims are not harmful,” Fortunati said. “They're trying to do the best they can.”
‘Treat them like humans’
In the month since Scott Garvey’s death, his family has struggled to come to terms with what happened. They wrestle with feelings of guilt. Shawn had asked his younger brother to give him some space after he dropped Scott off in Vermont — a request Scott followed, even on the day of his death.
“He was like respecting the boundary that I had put up — and I feel so awful about that,” Shawn said. “What if he had called me? Would I [have] had some magic turn of words that he would have felt comforted by?”
A few days after the shooting, the Garveys said police allowed them to go back to the apartment where Scott died. There were still bullet holes in the walls and blood on the floor, along with Scott’s bloodied Red Sox cap. The family had to pay $5,000 to clean the apartment, Shawn said.
“It's a second victimization that I can't imagine anyone intended, but it's horrifying,” Shawn said.
The Garveys have taken to speaking up. They’ve met with state lawmakers to share their experience. Shawn said that every morning he calls Gov. Phil Scott’s office to request a meeting. He hasn’t gotten a call back. A spokesperson for the governor’s office declined to comment because the shooting is under active investigation.
Shawn said he doesn’t expect that the investigation into his brother’s death will lead to any sort of accountability, pointing to the fact that all the fatal shootings involving VSP were found to be legally justified.
The Garveys said they want society to treat people who struggle with mental illness more humanely. One idea, Kara said, could be to listen to people like her brother Scott.
In a text message as he was leaving Memphis, Scott told Kara about his hopes for a new mental health facility in the city: He wanted it to have multiple floors; two basketball courts; a store for candies, drinks and cigarettes; and a theater room for nightly movies.
“Treat them like humans,” Scott wrote in his text.
