IMPD identifies officer who fatally shot man with machete
INDIANAPOLIS (WISH) — Indianapolis police identified the officer who shot and killed a 40-year-old man wielding a machete last weekend during a standoff on the city’s west side.
IMPD Chief Randal Taylor identified the officer involved as Lt. John Perkins, who has worked for the department for 28 years.
Just before 7 p.m. on Aug. 27, Indianapolis Metropolitan Police Department officers were asked to carry out a welfare check at a home in the 4500 block of Woodland Drive. That’s a residential area near 46th Street and Moller Road on the city’s west side.
Officers had been at the home several times since Aug. 25 when the man’s relatives asked for a welfare check because he was “sending out strange messages to family,” IMPD said in a release.
IMPD says officers were called back to the house early on Aug. 26, but they “believed he was not a danger to others,” and left after he refused to open his bedroom door. Police returned to the house around 8:30 p.m. the same day after relatives called 911 and said he was threatening to decapitate them. The man was still barricaded inside his room, according to IMPD.
Just before 5:30 p.m. on Aug. 27, police received a call from the same address from a family member saying her brother was “hallucinating and stated he would burn the house down,” IMPD said in a statement. The family member was told to leave the residence.
Indianapolis SWAT officers and crisis negotiators were called to the home on Woodland Drive. Multiple negotiators spoke with the man, but “were not able to have any meaningful conversation,” according to IMPD.
Just after 9 p.m., members of the SWAT team tried to get the man to surrender using bean bag rounds, a taser, and pepper balls. IMPD says this was an attempt to take the man into custody “without using deadly force.”
“Officers reported the male moved towards officers with the machete in his hand and physically made contact with a ballistics shield an officer was holding. One member of the SWAT team discharged his firearm, striking the male at least once,” IMPD said in a release.
The man was transported to Eskenazi Hospital, where he died. He was identified Monday as 40-year-old Kendall Gilbert.
The incident is still being investigated by IMPD’s Critical Response Team. IMPD did not provide a photo of Perkins.
