LAWRENCEBURG, Ind. — The officer who fatally shot a man in a Lawrenceburg apartment building in Oct. 2020 acted in self defense and was justified, Dearborn County prosecutor Lynn Deddens announced on Thursday.
According to an October news release from ISP, Lawrenceburg police received a call about a disturbance at Summit Pointe Apartments around 3 a.m. on Oct. 24, 2020. When they arrived, they were confronted by a naked man holding a knife.
A Lawrenceburg officer fired at the man, later identified as 33-year-old Brandon Evans. He died at the scene.
Officers searching the complex found the second body: 37-year-old Staci Coyne lay dead inside one of the apartments.
She was the victim of an apparent homicide, according to the ISP news release.
Coyne and Evans were in a relationship.
He was charged with battery June 9, but court records do not name Coyne in that incident. Evans was in the Dearborn County Jail until September.
At the time of his death, he was on probation and supposed to be in counseling.
According to a release from Deddens, the officer who shot Evans attempted to retreat backwards, upstairs, while repeatedly ordering Evans to drop the weapon.
"Evans stated, 'You're going to have to f***ing kill me,' and laughed," the release says. Once the officer reached the end of the hallway and had nowhere else to escape, he continued to tell Evans to drop the weapon. Once Evans closed the gap between them to roughly 10 feet, Deddens said, the officer fired six shots.
Evans' mother, who initially called 911 to report a domestic disturbance, told police her son had banged on her door, but she refused to open it for fear that he would kill her.
“She was a sweetheart,” she said of Coyne in Oct. 2020. "She did everything in her power, too, and she loved him so much."
