Scout Schultz, a 21-year-old fourth-year engineering student at Georgia Tech, and president of schools Pride Alliance was shot and killed on Saturday night by police after reusing to surrender a knife and telling officers to shoot.
The school identified the victim as Scout Schultz, 21, a fourth-year engineering student from Lilburn, Georgia, who police said was armed with a knife. Schultz, president of Georgia Tech’s Pride Alliance, identified as non-binary and intersex and preferred to be referred to with they/them gender pronouns, according to the alliance’s website.
Police made contact with Schultz outside a campus parking garage after they received a 911 call at 11:17 p.m. on Saturday, according to the Georgia Bureau of Investigation. The original call reported that Schultz was also carrying a gun, officials said.
“Nobody wants to hurt you,” an officer says in the video.
But as Schultz continued to ignore the officers’ commands and stepped forward with the knife, a single shot rang out, and Schultz’s screams could be heard.
The young engineering student died later at Grady Memorial Hospital.
Schultz’s parents said that Scout was diagnosed with depression at a young age and that their child’s mental health often wavered. They and others are calling into question the use of lethal force used by police.
Chris Stewart, a lawyer representing Schultz’s family, said that that photos from the scene show that Schultz had a 12-piece multitool at the time of the shooting but that the knife blade was not extended. Steward said that Schultz was being portrayed inaccurately as carrying a more dangerous weapon.
A video has been released of the disturbing incident. CLICK HERE to view. (WARNING: The video contains graphic content that may not be suitable for some people.)
There was no reason for police to shoot Scout!.
But, please use your spell-check on your articles: it’s not…after reusing – it’s … refusing; it’s not…thier child’s mental health – it’s their. Such a short article
Kinda fixed. We are a blog not a professional media site thus the short article. Also it was very hard to write because of the pronoun situation.
Good grief, the pronoun issue is simply ludicrous. If someones mental health is hinged on using the proper pronouns then they are probably unhinged. Obviously, this person shouldn’t have been shot but I’m not a PoPo either.
Don’t challenge the PoPo, live longer.
The police in Georgia have never been known to deal well with the obviously mentally ill. This was ,once again ,an obvious case of suicide by cop. There is even a startling video.Unfortunately in this case the Georgia Tech police were denied Tasers. In their place they were given pepper spray. I know that makes a ton of sense to me too. Kinda like putting out a fire with a bottled water. Georgia has no provision in the laws there for mental illness. They even have executed people as recently as 2015.
Wanna bet those officers will be on disability for post traumatic stress? I’ll even make odds they move to a state more friendly to “Mental Illness”.