Attorney General Charity Clark announced Friday her office wouldn’t prosecute Ludlow Police Chief Jeffrey Warfle after he shot an 18-year-old who lunged at him with a knife.
The attorney general’s office determined that Warfle reasonably believed he was in imminent danger of being killed or suffering great bodily harm, which, under Vermont law, meant he was justified in using deadly force.
Caledonia County State’s Attorney Claire Burns also declined to prosecute the case in her own independent review. (The attorney general’s office and a county prosecutor review all police shootings in the state to determine whether they’re legally justified.)
The shooting occurred on the morning of Jan. 1 at the Fox Run Inn in Ludlow. Warfle responded to a 911 call about a noise disturbance that appeared to be coming from Jaime Gomez’s room, the attorney general’s office said in a press release.
Warfle told state police he’d previously encountered Gomez, and he’d flagged Gomez for "violent tendencies and possibly schizophrenia,” according to a police affidavit.
That morning, Warfle asked Gomez if he was in crisis, and Gomez told him “no crisis,” the attorney general’s office said.
After speaking to Gomez, Warfle went up a set of stairs to talk to Gomez’s neighbors who had called the police.
While Warfle was talking to the neighbors, Gomez came up the stairs with his hands in his jacket pockets. Gomez told Warfle he didn’t have anything, and refused multiple times to take his hands out of his pockets, the attorney general’s office said.
Gomez then tried to strike Warfle with a knife that he had hidden in his pocket, the attorney general’s office said. Gomez was less than 10 feet from Warfle, according to the press release.
Warfle fired two shots at Gomez. One round grazed Gomez’s forearm and the other hit him in the abdomen. Gomez was arrested and hospitalized at Dartmouth-Hitchcock Medical Center.
In an interview with state police at the hospital, Gomez told investigators he had started hearing voices a few years ago and continued to hear them during the few months he’d been living at the Fox Run Inn, according to a police affidavit.
Gomez told police someone had “tapped into his thoughts,” and admitted to investigators, according to the affidavit, that he was scared that morning Warfle showed up because he thought he could go to jail for yelling. Gomez told police he tried to attack the chief and he wasn’t thinking, the affidavit says.
Gomez pleaded not guilty to charges of second-degree attempted murder and two counts of aggravated assault related to the incident. If convicted of the murder charge, he could be sentenced to life in prison.
Gomez is currently incarcerated at Southern State Correctional Facility, according to the Department of Corrections jail tracker.
There’s a longstanding pattern in Vermont of police shootings involving people with mental health issues. Several lawmakers introduced a bill this session that’s intended to prevent these situations.
