He wants to go out like Bonnie and Clyde, says cop before fatally shooting troubled 16-year-old football star
A 16-year-old high school football star, who had been described as suicidal, has been fatally shot by Carver County deputies after a brief standoff took place outside the teen's home in Chanhassen. His parents were both standing nearby when the incident occurred. Archer Amorosi was identified by his classmates and was reported to have been a lacrosse and football player. He was going to start his junior high at Minnetonka High School very soon. The authorities have claimed that the teen brandished weapons at the officers who were present. Deputies from the nearby sheriff's office responded to a call about the situation in the 6400 block of Oriole Avenue just off Highway 7 at around 10 am.
According to the Minnesota Bureau of Criminal Apprehension, the woman who had called 911 described her son as suicidal and said that he had been threatening her with knives and a baseball bat. Deputies reached the scene very soon and first used a Taser on the teen before two of the officers present shot him to death. Amorosi died at the scene of the incident.
According to the BCA, the agency which is now investigating the shooting, body cam and dash cam footage from one of the five agencies that reported to the incident "may have recorded portions of the incident", the Star Tribune reported.
Both the officers who fired their guns are currently on the standard administrative leave and the BCA is tasked with finding out what happened before they give their findings to the Carver County Attorney's office for further review. By midafternoon the same day, more than a dozen of Amorosi's friends and teammates arrived at his home and had come to grieve along with his equally shocked relatives. Investigators were processing the scene while a lot of the teen's friends could be seen hugging each other and crying nearby.
16-year-old Reed Greenwood described the teen as loud, energetic, and a person who was a part of the popular crowd in the school they attended. Many social media posts showed Amorosi as a good-looking young man with long blond hair all lit up with a bright smile on his face. Two unnamed teenage boys from Minnetonka High arrived at the scene and described the teen athlete as talented as well as a "super fun, nice guy". One of the boys slammed the police for their use of force by saying: "They knew about the mental issues. It’s sad it had to end this way."
Other students posted memories that they had of Amorosi on Twitter along with messages of condolence for the rest of the family. One tweet read: "Rip dude): u deserved better." Another one said: "Today I lost a brother. Long live Archer." The lacrosse team at Minnetonka High tweeted: "Rest easy, Archer, we will miss you incredibly and love you forever."
The emergency dispatch audio from the incident that was released by the Carver County Sheriff's Office has revealed how fast the whole thing actually happened. During the initial call, the 911 dispatcher said: "Male party has knives and a baseball bat. Mother is stating that he wants the officers to shoot him." The dispatcher identified that the suspect was male and the name was Amorosi. His mother had been the one to call 911. She had told the dispatcher that her son had locked her inside the garage by disabling the garage door.
An officer responded on the audio by saying: "I was there yesterday. Dad said that he’s got some mental health issues. Has this idea that he wants to go out like Bonnie and Clyde." The officer also said that the father had not been aware of the presence of firearms on the property aside from an Airsoft pellet gun. One of the other officers responded by saying that Amorosi would be "hostile towards law enforcement as well."
According to the audio, the officers reached the scene and saw Amorosi in his living room along with "some kind of handgun" in his left hand and what looked like a knife in his right hand. Mental health crisis experts were also present at the scene.
The officers formed a perimeter around the house and one of them noted that "he does continually point a handgun in my direction." The teen was then seen pacing between the front of the house and the garage door. Deputies were desperately trying to get his mother out of the garage. The teen went back to the living room where he switched between aiming at the officers and the garage door. The deputies fired pepper spray canisters into the home.
The audio says that the boy's father reached the scene and had to be escorted away by officers. They then held the teen at gunpoint while he had "a hatchet and something in his hands." Another officer said just before the teen was shot: "Get both the parents out of here." Another officer was then heard saying: "Shots fired, shots fired, ambulance code 3, suspect is down." CPR was performed on the teen in the yard located on the south side of the house.
Ambulances were immediately called for the mother and another officer on the scene who suffered minor injuries. A minute after the ambulances were called for, an officer tells the dispatcher: "At this time, we have terminated efforts on the gunshot victim." The call for the ambulance was then canceled.
One of the neighbors who lives just two doors away from the Amorosi's, Heather Sandahl, said she saw the authorities responding to an incident at the Amorosi house just as she was leaving hers at 10:10 am for a tour at Paisley Park. Some of the officers, she said, looked like they were removing their guns from their holster and even put on their bullet-resistant vests, Sandahl remembered: "We went back and asked the officers, 'Are we safe here?' They said they weren’t sure, and we left as more squads came rushing down the road."
After the tour was over, Sandahl found out everything that had happened in the home that she lived so close to. A friend of her's who had stayed back in the house recalled how she had dropped to the ground in fear the moment she heard the gunshots. Many hours later, Sandahl was waiting down the road in the Cub Foods parking lot away from her own home because her driveway had been blocked. She broke down when she found out that the victim had been Amorosi. She said: "It’s just not fair."
Greg Greenwood, another neighbor who lives down the street and whose son, Reed, studies in the same school Amorosi went to, was in the Caribou parking lot a quarter of a mile away when he said he heard two popping sounds just before 10:30 am. He said: "I hunt, so I know gunshots. We don’t have much happen around here, so when it does, it’s a big shock."