Vermont State Police were justified in shooting and killing an unarmed man who had barricaded himself in his Putney apartment during a mental health episode last year, Vermont Attorney General Charity Clark announced on Tuesday.
The state trooper who shot 55-year-old Scott Garvey three times “reasonably believed” that Garvey had a rifle and was aiming it at officers as they entered his apartment after hours of negotiation proved futile, the Attorney General’s Office said in a statement. The object, which Garvey did not drop despite repeated commands from officers, turned out to be a pipe that his family said he used as a cane.
“Under the totality of these circumstances — including, but not limited to, Mr. Garvey’s prior behavior, threats of harm to others, his assertion that he had a gun, and his refusal of commands to drop what he had in his hands — an objectively reasonable officer in Trooper [Peter] Romeo’s position would have concluded that there was no other reasonable alternative to the use of deadly force to prevent death or serious bodily injury to himself and others,” the statement reads.
Garvey’s family sharply criticized the decision.
“My brother wasn’t a threat to anybody,” said Shawn Garvey, his older brother. “And they chose to go in with guns trained on him and shoot him. That’s the definition of escalation.”
The Attorney General’s Office released a statement about the incident that included a detailed description of events.
It began on July 6, a Sunday, at 10:20 p.m., when a caller reported that Garvey had barricaded himself in his apartment at 23 Neumann Lane in Putney and may have lit a fire. Emergency crews responded, and it turned out the suspected “smoke” reported had been discharged from a fire extinguisher.
Mental health professionals spoke with Garvey and reported that he was “calm and not suicidal or homicidal.” He had moved to Putney less than a week earlier and suffered from “auditory hallucinations and schizophrenia.”
At 7:14 a.m. the next morning, Garvey called 911 reporting fears that people “were in the woods with guns” and were trying to get into his apartment.
A trooper and a mental health specialist returned after a neighbor reported around 11:15 a.m. that a man was “banging on the windows and stating that the voices are telling him to kill everyone,” according to AG’s account.
Garvey claimed to have a gun and refused to open his front door, according to the report.
The response team, which grew to at least four officers and two mental health professionals, tried for more than four hours to resolve the situation by talking to Garvey and urging him to get help.
“Ultimately, these conversations were unsuccessful in convincing Mr. Garvey to leave his apartment,” the statement said.
Officers obtained a search warrant for his arrest and prepared to enter the apartment. They opted not to use nonlethal options, including beanbag guns or Tasers, because firing them “at that close range could potentially cause serious injury,” according to the statement.
His brother took issue with this claim and noted that they could have tried other nonlethal means, such as pepper spray, to get Garvey out.
Ultimately a line of officers in tactical gear began to enter the rear door of his apartment. They told Garvey to put down the object, which his brother said was a chrome drum stand he used as a cane.
The report indicates that the officers became “stuck in line formation in the doorway” because of the barricades. When Romeo saw Garvey move the object “up to his cheek and point it” toward officers, he realized they could not take cover.
“At that point, Trooper Romeo believed the object to be a rifle ready to fire,” the statement reads.
Romeo fired seven times, striking Garvey fatally with three rounds.
Shawn Garvey, who now lives in California but whose sister and mother live in Vermont, said his family “has been brutalized” not just by the killing but also by how they’ve been treated by the state since. They’ve begged for meetings with the governor and the attorney general to discuss the case for a nearly a year and were ignored throughout, he said. Only after the decision was released did they have a meeting with AG staff on Tuesday afternoon, he said.
He noted bitterly that his brothers’ killing is the 48th time since 1977 that the state has found law enforcement officers justified in using deadly force.
“They are 100 percent justified whenever they kill somebody,” Garvey said. “So you get a certain cynicism with that knowledge, that these types of institutions don’t really have the capacity to self-reflect and self-evaluate in a way more appropriate to 2026, frankly.”
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