Officer cleared after shooting and killing man who stabbed teen in Charlotte home, DA says
A Charlotte-Mecklenburg Police SWAT officer saved the life of a 13-year-old girl by firing two fatal shots at her stepfather as the man repeatedly stabbed her in their Ballantyne home, Mecklenburg County District Attorney Spencer Merriweather said Thursday.
Officer Edward Mark’s “use of lethal force saved (the teenager’s) life from a person who left little doubt of his intention to kill her,” Merriweather wrote in a 25-page letter to the N.C. State Bureau of Investigation in which the DA said he won’t seek charges against the officer.
Merriweather’s letter offered new details that led to the shooting.
Mark shot David Samuel Herbert on Dec. 18 as Herbert stabbed his stepdaughter “with a large hunting knife multiple times” in an upstairs bedroom of a home in the 10000 block of Blairbeth Street, Merriweather wrote.
Later examination revealed the girl had been stabbed 13 to 15 times, according to the DA’s letter.
The night of the shooting, police said a man “forced his way into his ex-wife’s home,“ The Charlotte Observer reported at the time.
The woman managed to leave the house, but her daughter was still inside, police said at the time.
“The officers were trying to deescalate the situation” when the man, “without warning,” began stabbing the girl, police Chief Johnny Jennings told reporters near the scene.
“They were met with something that horrific, to see a 13-year-old getting stabbed, and they were left with no choice,” Jennings said. “The motive to stab a 13-year-old is something that is beyond comprehension for us.”
Stepdad refused to release girl
Ten minutes before police entered the home, Herbert spoke with his sister in a video call, the woman told the SBI, Merriweather wrote.
Herbert repeatedly told her “he was not going back to prison, and he was going to die tonight,” according to the letter.
Before Mark arrived at the home, police Sgt. Joseph Pendergrast tried talking Herbert into releasing his stepdaughter, but Herbert refused, Merriweather wrote.
Pendergrast’s service weapon remained holstered as he spoke with the man, while other CMPD officers who were in the home had their guns drawn, according to the DA.
Herbert told the officers he would neither show his hands nor leave the second floor, Merriweather wrote.
“I already know I’m spending the rest of my life in prison if I come down,” the DA said Herbert told officers.
When Mark arrived, CMPD Sgt. Eric Tran-Thompson told him a man “had a knife on the daughter’s neck and was holding her against her will,” according to a summary of a statement Mark gave to the SBI and that Merriweather included in his letter.
The district attorney also included summaries of statements other CMPD officers and Herbert’s family gave to the SBI.
Officer angled to take shot
Video from cameras worn by officers at the scene show Mark entering the home from a laundry room, pointing his rifle at Herbert and telling him, “Let me see your hands,” according to Merriweather’s letter.
“He’s pointing a gun at me,” Herbert replied, and the girl “began to shriek,” the DA said in his letter.
As his stepdaughter cried and said “it hurts,” Herbert told Mark to “put it down now,” according to the letter. “... Down or everybody goes.”
“Put the knife down right now, sir,” Mark replied.
“Now you’re escalating it,” Herbert said. “All I wanted to do was talk to a detective.”
“He has that knife to her throat,” Pendergrast then told Mark, according to the letter. “He’s going to kill her.”
“You’ve got on the count of three to get out of here,” Herbert told Mark, as his stepdaughter pleaded, “please don’t hurt me,” Merriweather wrote to the SBI.
Mark went up the stairs and twice told Herbert to put the knife down, Merriweather said body-worn camera video shows. The officer ordered Herbert two more times to drop the knife when Herbert forced his stepdaughter into a back bedroom, the DA said.
Mark said he “tried to create an angle to take a shot” and at the same time attempted “to pull the girl away” from the man, “but could not,” according to the summary of his statement in Merriweather’s letter.
‘Reasonable’ use of deadly force
When he’d entered the upstairs room moments earlier, Mark said, he saw the man holding “a big hunting-type knife” that the man began “swinging” toward him.
Mark told the SBI he thought, at that point, the man stabbed the girl “two or three times.”
That’s when he shot the man, Mark said.
In his letter to the SBI, Merriweather said body-worn camera video, a statement by Herbert’s stepdaughter and statements by other officers at the scene corroborate Mark’s account.
A 1989 court ruling in a Charlotte case established that police can use deadly force if they have an “objectively reasonable” fear of death or serious injury to themselves, fellow officers or the public at large, the Observer previously reported.
“The evidence clearly demonstrates that Officer Mark was indeed reasonable in his belief that the decedent posed an imminent threat of great bodily harm or death to” the girl, Merriweather wrote to the SBI.
This story was originally published July 8, 2022 at 6:05 AM.