Terribly sad news out of HPD — the Metro cop who was involved in the agency’s first fatal shooting has committed suicide.
Officer R.L. Harrington had been no-billed by a grand jury in relation to the incident, in which he shot and killed a knife-wielding man and injured a passer-by near the Rice campus.
“We’re confident that Officer Harrington did exactly what he was supposed to do,” Metro police chief Tom Lambert said after the no-billing.
An unidentified male’s body was discovered at 3:45 a.m. September 5 in a car in the 9300 block of Richmond.
“Patrol officers responded to a shooting-in-progress call and found the victim sitting in the driver’s seat of his vehicle with a gunshot wound to the head,” HPD said at the time.
HPD spokesman Victor Senties tells Hair Balls, “The case has been closed out as a suicide.”
Metro spokeswoman Raequel Roberts referred all questions on the matter to HPD. Metro and the bystander who was shot offered wildly divergent descriptions of the event and its aftermath.
This article appears in Sep 17-23, 2009.