Via Fred Tippens, this strange report.

The attorney of a Chattanooga police officer says her client intentionally shot a man who had just committed suicide – directly contradicting a previous police report claiming it was an accident.

The Chattanooga Police Department (CPD) says officers responded Sunday morning to a situation at the Cross Creek Villas involving a man threatening to commit suicide with a gun.

According to attorney Janie Varnell of David & Hoss, P.C., Officer Brian Cottell followed his extensive training in hostage negotiations and tried to talk the man into dropping the weapon.

The CPD report says the man did not follow officers’ orders, and then shot and killed himself. That is when CPD says the officer fired his gun three times, striking the man’s body with one of the bullets.

The CPD report says that the firing of the gun was an accident – the attorney’s statement disputes this.

“Contrary to previous reports, Officer Cottell did not discharge his service weapon unintentionally,” the statement reads. “He did not accidentally shoot a man who was deceased. He purposefully discharged his weapon to protect himself and other officers as he was trained to do in these types of situations.”

The statement continues that Cottell, standing about 15 feet away from the man, fired at almost the same time as the man did.

Varnell says Officer Cottell has a 20-year career in law enforcement, is a military veteran, and has extensive training in critical incidents involving suicidal parties, hostage negotiations, and high-intensity situations.

Um, what?

Let’s see if we can unpack this.  So the police officer was being protected by himself and perhaps his partner, neither of whom wanted to face the music with the public when they found out the stupidity of shooting a man holding a gun to his head, and claimed that it was essentially a negligent discharge.

But wait.  This might indicate that he nervously pulled the trigger when he heard loud noises, thus making him unfit for his job even with the goobers on the police force.  So then they amended their claim to assert that the shooting was intentional.

Highly trained, he was.  High-intensity situations.  Hostage negotiations.  A Ninja warrior all the way around.  He followed procedure, a stupid procedure that must say to shoot people holding a gun to their head.

Meaning that he perjured himself on the original police report.

And so the people of Chattanooga feel safer tonight that an “only-one” followed his procedures.  I’m not sure anyone can say for sure if the man was dead or not, or that he wouldn’t have lived through the injuries he inflicted upon himself.  But the good news is that the Ninja warrior got to go home safely that night.  That’s the only thing that matters.

In other news, you’d better not try to commit suicide in Chattanooga.  The cops will fill you full of holes.