Dylan Brogan
Police Chief Mike Koval talks to reporters on June 30, a few hours after one of his officers shot and killed a 41-year-old man who had broken into a home on the east side.
The police shooting on Morrison Street the night of June 30 is just two blocks from Kevin O’Malley’s home. That’s where Paul Heenan was killed by officer Stephen Heimsness in 2012, right in front of O’Malley. “I think the point we’re at right now in the neighborhood is complete and utter fatigue,” O’Malley said on July 1. “It feels like the new normal.”
O’Malley is close friends with the homeowners at 1303 Morrison St., where police killed 41-year-old Michael Schumacher of Fitchburg. O’Malley said they were big supporters of his family in the aftermath of Heenan’s death. Now, inexplicably, his friends are going through a similar trauma. “[The homeowner] came up to me and gave me a hug last night and let me know his family was okay. That’s where you’re at. You’re not at any other level when it happens to you.”
O’Malley said he still hasn’t completely sorted through what happened outside his home four years ago. “I remember talking to multiple people. Each of them told me it would take years to really process, and it’s true. It does takes years. I don’t know how much the city or the police department has learned to manage these situations properly. This has happened three times in the past four years.”
“Feeling terrible is just something everyone is going to feel,” he added.
According to Police Chief Mike Koval, the incident started with a 911 call from a resident who saw a man “chest-deep in the lake.”
“The person was acting oddly in that they seemed to be talking to themselves and were subsequently slapping the water,” Koval said at the scene, a few hours after the shooting. “This person was [also] seen hurling a rock through the [nearby neighbor’s] dwelling, breaking the window.”
A second 911 call then came in from the homeowners, who had fled after hearing someone enter their home, Koval said. “They could hear things being smashed up. We sent multiple officers to the scene. The first officer arrived and was told to stand down.”
As the lone officer (identified Wednesday as Hector Rivera) waited for backup, the suspect allegedly approached him wielding “a four-prong pitchfork” used to rake lake weeds. “The officer gave numerous verbals to drop it and to stand where he was,” said Koval. “The officer started to back off, person was aggressing and the officer was compelled to shoot him.”
First aid was administered to the suspect, who was taken to the hospital, but the man “succumbed to his injuries and died,” said Koval.
Since 2008, Schumacher had been living in an apartment provided by Housing Initiatives, a nonprofit dedicated to ending homelessness for people suffering from mental illness, says its executive director, Dean Loumos.
“I’m not exactly sure what happened, but it looks like he was having an episode,” Loumos said this week. “That’s what’s insidious and terrifying about this illness. It can make you do things that you would not do in your right mind. This is not normal behavior, and it wasn’t Mike’s normal behavior.”
Ashley Painter, who lives around the corner from where the shooting happened, describes a terrifying scene on the night of the shooting. She was sitting on the couch with her husband, with the front door open to let in the summer breeze. Shortly after 9 p.m. they heard gunshots.
“They felt like they were right outside our house,” said Painter. “We got scared and went into our basement. We didn’t know it was the police; we just heard shots.”
When the couple emerged from the basement 10 minutes later, scores of police were outside 1303 Morrison St., and officers were cordoning off their block with yellow tape.
“I’m relieved that our neighbors with two small children just happened to be out of town,” she added.
Marsha Rummel, alder for the east-side district, heard about the shooting from neighbors on social media and went to the scene. “It’s tragic for our city. We are struggling to deal with the issue of use of force, and it comes and smacks us in the face again and again in different ways,” said Rummel.
This is the third officer-involved shooting in the Marquette neighborhood since 2012. Heenan was killed in November 2012, and Tony Robinson was killed in March 2015.
Dane County Supervisor John Hendrick lives directly across the street from where Thursday’s fatal shooting occurred. He said the killings will likely make people reluctant to call the police for help. “It’s hard when you think if you call the police someone is going to die,” Hendrick said.
Mayor Paul Soglin, in a press conference the day after the shooting, proposed an education campaign to teach the public about how to interact with police. “Last night when I was informed of the latest officer-involved shooting, I lay there in bed and I said, ‘we got a problem here,’” said Soglin.
The mayor said individuals have three choices when they are in a situation with the police. “Obey the order of the police officer. Go limp and not resist. Or they can make the mistake of not obeying. I don’t know how many times we’re going to have to go through this. I really believe we’ve got to do something as a community.”
Rummel, the council’s pro tem, said Common Council leadership is concerned about “issues surrounding the community and the Madison Police Department.”
“There is a sector of our community that wants community control over the police,” she said. “They been asking about that ever since Tony Robinson.”
The state’s Department of Criminal Investigation, as required by recent state law, is conducting a review of the incident.
Amelia Royko-Maurer was an advocate for the 2014 state law that requires that an independent agency review police conduct during all officer-involved shootings. Heenan was staying with Royko-Maurer at her Baldwin Street home when he was killed.
“There seems to be a common theme of people in crisis. It begs the question, shouldn’t we have a 24-hour mental health agency for the sole purpose of responding to mental health crises, not for the sole purpose of enforcing the law?”
Days after the killing, Loumos was grieving. When on medication, Loumos said, Schumacher was “engaging, interesting and quite bright.”
“But this illness just changes you 180 sometimes,” he added. “Going forward, how do we ensure someone who is demonstrating behaviors that are clearly some kind of breakdown — whether it’s drugs, alcohol or mental illness — that the response never reaches this point.”
Editor's note: This article has been updated since it was originally posted on July 1.