AUGUSTA, Maine (AP) A riverside memorial was held for a Maine man shot and killed by police after he threatened and injured a fellow resident of a shelter with a knife.
Dustin Paradis, 34, was living at the Bread of Life Shelter in Augusta last month when two police officers shot and killed him, the Kennebec Journal reported. Responding to a call, police said they found a man with injuries outside the shelter and then found Paradis inside where he waved the knife he was holding.
The Augusta Police department and the Maine attorney general’s office, which investigates all police shootings in the state, are both investigating. The man’s injuries were not life threatening, the newspaper reported.
Tammy Woodcock, Paradis’ mother, said her son had Asperger’s syndrome, a mild form of autism. She said he was kind but sometimes would lash out when he did not take his medications. She said that police had previously responded to other instances where he grabbed a knife, but that those were resolved without injury.
Woodcock, who lives in Indiana, said her son was 6 feet 10 and was emotionally much younger than the man he appeared to be.
Other residents at Bread of Life told the newspaper that the other man had been harassing Paradis at the shelter to the extent that earlier in the day, Paradis had hit the other man in the head with a towel.
In Paradis’ memory, his friends put 34 carnations into the Kennebec River, one for each year of his life.
