This world is just crazy. A white cop from West Virginia has been fired…yes FIRED… for not shooting a black suicidal man. Stephen Mader, a former police officer in Weirton, West Virginia, confronted the suicidal man, 23-year-old Ronald D. “R.J.” Williams, Jr. who was armed during a domestic violence incident.
Mader used training he learned while in the Marines to help Williams. He used the ‘calm voice’ technique. Mader says,
“I told him, ‘Put down the gun,’ and he’s like, ‘Just shoot me.’ And I told him, ‘I’m not going to shoot you brother.’ Then he starts flicking his wrist to get me to react to it. I thought I was going to be able to talk to him and deescalate it. I knew it was a suicide-by-cop [situation].”
Williams’s ex-girlfriend called the police saying he had a knife and a gun and was threatening to either kill himself or make the police kill him. She said Williams threatened her as well as went into the room their son was sleeping in saying,
“I’m going to kill myself in front of you and the child, and you’re going to live with this the rest of your life, and our son is going to know you caused my death.”
When she told him she was going to call the cops, he said,
“You know what? I’m going to make the cops do it.”
Two other officers arrived at the scene and guess what they did? Just take a wild guess.
“Mr. Williams walked toward them waving his gun—later found to be unloaded—between them and Mr. Mader, and one of them shot Mr. Williams’ in the back of the head just behind his right ear, killing him.”
Mader was fired from his job a month later after he failed to ‘eliminate a threat.’
Source: Complex
