A man comes out of a house with a gun. Points it at a crowd of people. Officers move to confront him. He runs. It ends in a foot chase and a shooting.
Wilmington police in Delaware were monitoring a large crowd near 24th and Jessup Streets just after 11 p.m. on June 24 when officers saw 19-year-old Kadir Skinner exit a residence armed with a handgun and point it toward the crowd. As officers moved to approach him, Skinner ran. A foot pursuit followed.
During the chase, an officer fired their weapon four times, striking Skinner once. He was taken to a local hospital, where he later died. Officers recovered a loaded handgun at the scene. The officer was not injured.
Here’s the analysis. A man is reported pointing a firearm at a crowd of people. Officers respond, locate him, and he runs instead of complying. Under Graham v. Connor, an officer doesn’t have to wait for a suspect to turn and fire before responding to an armed threat that’s already been established. A subject who was just seen pointing a gun at a crowd, then flees from police while still armed, is not a subject an officer can treat as low-risk. That’s the read here, and it’s not complicated.
What made this scene worse afterward had nothing to do with the shoot itself. Once the shooting happened, the crowd became hostile fast, closing in on the officers working the scene and slowing down efforts to get medical attention moving. That’s its own problem, separate from whether the shooting itself was justified, and it’s worth pointing out: a chaotic, hostile crowd doesn’t make officers safer, it makes everything on scene harder, including getting a wounded suspect the medical care he needs.
The gun was recovered at the scene, loaded. That detail matters, because it confirms the core of the department’s account: this started with a man who was armed, and it ended because he was still armed and running from police instead of stopping.
The Delaware Department of Justice is investigating, as happens with every officer-involved shooting in the state. The Skinner family has filed a $25 million claim against the city. That’s a separate process from the criminal investigation, and it’ll play out in civil court on its own timeline.
