Meriden Police Officer Was Justified In Shooting: Inspector General

MERIDEN, CT — A Meriden police officer was justified in the shooting of an armed robbery suspect near a motel in Meriden last year, according to the state inspector general’s report.

Connecticut Inspector General Robert J. Devlin Jr. issued his report Friday, concluding that Meriden Police Officer Erik Simonson’s use of deadly force against Kenneth Strothers was justified to prevent what Simonson “reasonably believed was Strothers’ imminent intent to shoot him.”

The shooting happened the morning of Feb. 12, 2021, after Meriden police responded to the Flamingo Inn, 1601 North Broad St., to assist the West Hartford Police Department with serving an arrest warrant for Kenneth Strothers. The warrant was in connection with a Jan. 30, 2021 armed robbery of a Shell gas station in West Hartford.

Police suspected that Strothers might be at a motel on the Berlin Turnpike and went to the area to investigation. Strothers saw police assembling in the Flamingo Inn parking lot and ran down the steep slope to North Broad Street and “across four lanes of traffic” into the driveway of Access Self Storage at 1672 North Broad Street, according to the report.

In the back of the storage facility, Strothers approached an SUV that was running and opened the driver’s door. Simonson took a position on the passenger side of the SUV, according to the report.

Strothers, who had ignored Simonson’s commands to stop during the chase, yelled to Simonson, “I got a gun” and pulled out an item wrapped in a white T-shirt, the report states.

“After a second or two, Strothers appeared to pull the slide back on the gun that was still wrapped in the T-shirt,” according to the report. “When Simonson observed Strothers pointing the firearm at him, he fired his department-issued handgun at Strothers one time. The bullet passed through the passenger side window of the SUV and struck Strothers in the lower left abdomen area.”

After the shooting, police removed a gun from Strothers that was wrapped in a T-shirt. The gun wasn’t loaded, according to the report.

Strothers was taken to Hartford Hospital, where he underwent surgery and was hospitalized for six days.

“While he was there, hospital staff learned that he suffered from schizoaffective disorder bipolar type and was noncompliant with his medications,” the report states.

Staff also learned Strothers was at the hospital 10 days earlier “with suicide ideation in the context of drug use,” according to the report.

“Strothers told the staff at Hartford Hospital that he was trying to get the cops to help him to commit suicide,” the report states.

Read the full report here.