Nashville officer in shooting loses police power amid review

NASHVILLE, Tenn. (AP) — Nashville’s police chief stripped an officer of policing authority Friday after he fired the final two shots to end a fatal interstate highway standoff in which nine officers opened fire on a man holding a box cutter.

Authorities had pleaded during the traffic-stopping encounter with Landon Eastep to surrender Thursday while they kept their guns drawn, but fatally shot him when he pulled another shiny object from his pocket and pointed it at police as if ready to shoot. That object turned out not to be a gun.

“Mr. Eastep was executed yesterday afternoon," said Joy Kimbrough, an attorney for the man's wife Chelesy, who sobbed quietly during a Friday news conference surrounded by community advocates. “He was sitting on a guardrail. He was not bothering anyone.”

Kimbrough wondered how what should have been a welfare check turned into a situation in which Eastep is estimated to have been shot 30 times.

“I think they should have been trying to get him some sort of help,” she said. “I don’t think they should have been standing there with guns drawn ready to shoot given any opportunity.”

Within hours of the incident, police had released body camera footage and identified the officers involved in the shooting of the 37-year-old Nashville man along Interstate 65.

By Friday, Nashville Police Chief John Drake announced he had ordered the department to decommission — meaning to strip policing power — from Officer Brian Murphy while the shooting is reviewed by the Tennessee Bureau of Investigation, or TBI.

Police say Murphy, a 25-year veteran of the force, fired the last two shots from a rifle. The other five Metro Nashville officers who fired were placed on routine administrative assignment, pending the TBI review.

Drake also ordered the department's...