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The Ramsey County Attorney’s Office has decided that St. Paul police officers were legally justified in shooting a man who was brandishing a gun on a street corner in October.
Earl Bennett, 41, was shot 15 times during the Oct. 28 standoff with police near the intersection of University and Snelling avenues in St. Paul. Bennett was later charged in two earlier shootings that killed four people in Minneapolis, although the officers at the scene weren’t aware he was a suspect.
Police were called to the intersection after reports that a man had fired a gun, according to a Minnesota Bureau of Criminal Apprehension investigation. The officers saw Bennett shirtless and barefoot with a gun in his hand.
Videos that have been released show Bennett pointing the gun at his head. The investigation found that officers repeatedly offered to help Bennett, tried to convince him to put down the gun and fired a “less lethal” weapon at him, but that Bennett raised and pointed the gun at the officers.
The four St. Paul officers fired at Bennett a total of 31 times, hitting him 15 times, according to the report. He was treated at Regions Hospital. He survived, but his right leg was amputated.
Ramsey County Attorney John Choi wrote in a memo dated last week that he’d decided that criminal charges weren’t warranted against the four officers involved in the shooting.
“The officers followed their training, made numerous reasonable attempts to deescalate the situation, and when Mr. Bennett pointed his handgun at the officers, they were left with no other reasonable choice to stop the threat posed by Mr. Bennett under these circumstances.
Since the shooting, Bennett has been charged by the Hennepin County Attorney's Office with three counts of second-degree murder for a shooting at a Minneapolis homeless encampment on Oct. 28. He’s also been charged with first-degree murder for another fatal shooting at a sober house in the city the day before. He's being held in Hennepin County Jail.
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