The widow of a 72-year-old Texas man is searching for answers after Fort Worth police shot and killed him on Tuesday while
responding to a burglary call involving a house across the street."Married 46 years, and, you know, somebody gets a little trigger-happy and away they go," Kathy Waller
said to WFAA-TV on Tuesday after her husband, Jerry Waller, was shot inside the couple's garage.
Kathy Waller told KHOU the couple noticed police in their Fort Worth neighborhood just after 1 a.m. Tuesday morning. Her husband grabbed his .38-caliber handgun and went downstairs to see what was happening. She said to the station she heard six gunshots afer he opened the garage door.
The Dallas News reported on Tuesday that authorities said in a statement that the two officers were "engaged by an adult male armed with a handgun" and shot him in fear for their safety. Jerry Waller was pronounced dead at the scene.
"I was told by an officer he wouldn't put his gun down," former city council member Becky Haskin
told the Fort Worth Star-Telegram. Haskin lives in the same neighborhood as the victim.
The
Star-Telegram also reported that the two unidentified officers involved in the shooting have been with the department for less than a year. They have both been placed on administrative leave. A department spokesperson, Cpl. Tracey Knight, also promised to conduct a transparent investigation of the shooting while explaining the officers' presence in the Wallers' home.
"Policies and procedures were followed," Knight told the
Star-Telegram. "Officers are taught when they go to a call to survey the entire landscape and not just the small area of where the call is."
Watch KHOU's report on the shooting, posted online on Wednesday, below.
can you be to leave your house with a gun in your hand when the police are outside? I wouldn't call them trigger-happy; they had no idea who he was. He could have been the burglar for all they knew. If he wanted to see what was going on he should have left the gun in the house. It is sad, but the shooting was due to the victim's idiocy, not "trigger-happy" cops (for once).