Campus police killed Scout Schultz, 21, who they said was advancing on officers with a knife, but mother questions why police didn’t use nonlethal force

This article is more than 3 years old

This article is more than 3 years old

A Georgia Tech police officer overreacted by firing a gunshot that killed an LGBTQ student activist who investigators say was armed with a knife and ignored commands to drop it, a lawyer for the family said on Monday.

Campus police killed Scout Schultz, 21, who they said was advancing on officers with a knife. Schultz refused to put down the knife and kept moving towards officers late on Saturday outside a dormitory, the Georgia Bureau of Investigation (GBI) said in a statement.

“Officers provided multiple verbal commands and attempted to speak with Shultz who was not cooperative and would not comply with the officers’ commands,” the agency said in a statement. “Shultz continued to advance on the officers with the knife.”

Attorney Chris Stewart told the Atlanta Journal-Constitution he thought Schultz was having a mental breakdown and didn’t know what to do. Stewart and the student’s family planned a news conference on Monday morning.

WSB-TV reported that the item involved, still on the ground when its news crew arrived, appeared to be a “metal, flip-open, multi-tool knife”.

Authorities did not immediately identify the officer who shot Schultz or release the 911 call that led to the confrontation. Preliminary information indicates that the initial call reported a person with a knife and a gun about 11.17pm, the GBI said in a statement.

Georgia Tech on Monday refused to release the 911 call or any personnel or disciplinary reports involving the officers, saying that such information was exempt from Georgia’s open records law.

Schultz was president of Pride Alliance at Georgia Tech. The fourth-year computer engineering student used the name Scout and preferred the pronouns “they” and “them” rather than “him” or “her”.

“I’m bisexual, nonbinary and intersex,” Schultz wrote in a Pride Alliance profile.

Lynne Schultz told the Journal-Constitution that her oldest child was a brilliant student despite numerous medical issues including depression, and had twice attempted suicide.

Most of Schultz’s stress was related to school, Lynne Schultz said. “Scout was always a perfectionist. They always worried they were going to fail a test but got all As and only two Bs at Tech.”

Schultz’s father, William, said his child had a history of depression but he wasn’t aware of any particular difficulties in recent weeks. William Schultz said Scout was a great student with a 3.9 GPA and was on track to graduate early in December.

Scout had spent the summer at home, he said, to decompress after working straight through the two previous summers. After attempting suicide two years ago, Scout Schultz went through counseling and there was no indication anything was wrong when his father dropped him at school last month.

Facebook Twitter Pinterest Scout Schultz at a Pride Alliance rally at Georgia Tech this summer. Photograph: Facebook

Many questions remained on Monday. GBI spokeswoman Nelly Miles said on Sunday she did not know whether the officer who fired at Schultz was trained in dealing with suspects who have mental disorders.

The GBI, through its Crisis Intervention Team, has trained about 10,000 local, state and federal law enforcement officers since it began in 2004, the Journal-Constitution reported. Atlanta, Roswell, Henry County and now DeKalb are among the agencies that require all of its officers to take the class. Some agencies do not require it.

“Why didn’t they use some nonlethal force, like pepper spray or Tasers?” Lynne Schultz said.

Police at the Georgia Institute of Technology do not carry Tasers or stun guns but are equipped with pepper spray, a Georgia Tech spokesman told the newspaper.

In May 2015, the University System of Georgia implemented a system-wide campus safety initiative. Among its recommendations: establish a program to review training needs for campus law enforcement at the state’s public colleges and universities. It set a 2016 timeline for establishing the program to identify gaps and develop necessary training programs.

The outcome of those recommendations wasn’t immediately known on Monday. A representative of the university system was looking into the matter.