Andrew Landry had never been in trouble with the law and had no history of mental illness, family members said Monday.
They remain puzzled and dismayed by his behavior Saturday night, when the 22-year-old was shot and killed at a mobile home in Lyman while threatening two York County sheriff’s deputies with a pair of knives, even after being shocked with a Taser.
The bizarre behavior apparently began hours earlier when emergency personnel were called to Landry’s home in Sanford after his grandmother found him out in the snow in only his pants and one sock.
“It just wasn’t him,” said Sharon O’Brien, Landry’s aunt, who witnessed the shooting along with her 24-year-old daughter. O’Brien said she was the one who called the sheriff’s office after failing to persuade Landry to go to the hospital because of his erratic behavior that day.
When the police arrived at the home on Faucher’s Lane, she said, Landry got more agitated.
“He just thought they came to harm me and my daughter. Unfortunately, to him, he was protecting me and my daughter. … The kid wouldn’t hurt a mouse,” she said.
Sgt. Kyle Kassa, who fired the fatal shots, has been placed on administrative leave with pay while the state Attorney General’s Office conducts an investigation into whether he was justified in using deadly force.
An autopsy is planned, and O’Brien said they would look for a brain tumor or drugs in Landry’s system that could explain his sudden manic behavior.
Sheriff Maurice Ouellette said that neither sheriff’s deputies nor police in Sanford, where Landry lived with his grandmother, have had previous contact with him.
Landry had been acting strangely all day, O’Brien said.
His grandmother had called 911 earlier in the day after she found him outside wearing jeans and a sock. Rescue workers apparently checked his physical condition and then left, O’Brien said.
The grandmother, whose name was not disclosed, was unavailable for comment Monday. Sanford fire officials, who would have been the ones to respond, did not return calls.
Ouellette didn’t have details of the Sanford incident, but said that because Landry was acting so oddly – he wasn’t making sense when he talked – family members decided he should go to O’Brien’s house in Lyman. She was there with her 24-year-old daughter, who was close to Landry.
O’Brien said they tried to convince him to go to a hospital, but he refused and continued to talk nonsense. They called the sheriff’s office for help at 8:20 p.m.
O’Brien said Landry never threatened her or her daughter.
“He didn’t even want me to answer the door” when the deputies arrived, she said. “He wanted to protect me and my daughter.”
The officers separated them from Landry inside the mobile home, but O’Brien and her daughter could still see what was happening as police tried to disarm Landry.
She watched as her mild-mannered nephew, about 5 feet 2 inches and maybe 130 pounds, withstood a direct hit from a Taser and remained standing. Ouellette confirmed that both prongs of the Taser hit Landry.
Police said Landry continued to threaten the officers with two stainless-steel kitchen knives about 6 to 8 inches long.
O’Brien said she watched as the sergeant opened fire, and said Landry got up once after initially being shot.
“It’s like something you wish never to see in a million years,” she said.
O’Brien said she doesn’t blame the officers.
“They did their job. I’ve thought a lot about it, honestly,” O’Brien said. “Everything was tried. … They were justified.”
Officers in Maine are trained to only fire their gun if they feel their life or the life of someone else is threatened and shooting is the only way to be sure to stop the suspect, said Robert Schwartz, executive director of the Maine Chiefs of Police Association.
Sometimes officers might call in a special reaction team and an officer trained in crisis intervention, but often the situation demands immediate reaction, he said. “They’re thrust into most situations and they have to act in a very short period of time,” Schwartz said.
Knives can be just as deadly as guns at close range, and officers are trained to shoot for the torso because they might miss if they aim for an arm or a leg, he said.
O’Brien described Landry as a gifted musician who had been taking online college courses in Wells for the past couple of years. He had taught himself to play organ, piano and guitar and was about to enroll in a music school, although she didn’t know which one.
“At the age of 8, he could play Beethoven,” O’Brien said.
Last week, Landry and his grandmother bought some of the items he would need for school, she said.
“He was supposed to head out to college,” O’Brien said. “We don’t know what happened that day, what brought it on.
“All of a sudden, something snapped.”
Staff Writer David Hench can be contacted at 791-6327 or at: dhench@pressherald.com
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