A man was shot and killed by police Wednesday in rural Franklin County.
Shay McKenna, 28, was wanted on a warrant for violating his bail conditions for allegedly possessing a firearm, according to Shannon Moss, a spokesperson for the Maine Department of Public Safety.
McKenna was charged with manslaughter in connection with the December 2022 death of his brother, 23-year-old Drew McKenna of Rumford, whom Shay McKenna allegedly shot at a Route 2 residence in Rumford. After the Dec. 19 shooting, Drew McKenna was taken to Maine Medical Center in Portland, where he died the next day from his injuries.
McKenna was tracked to Rangeley Plantation, where the Maine State Police attempted to arrest him, Moss said Thursday morning.
Negotiators informed McKenna he was under arrest, and a state police tactical team was brought to assist with the arrest.
When McKenna emerged from the van he was hiding inside, he was allegedly wearing a ballistic vest and armed with a rifle, according to Moss.
During the ensuing confrontation, Trooper Jeffrey Parks shot McKenna, who died at the scene.
Parks has been placed on paid administrative leave, as is standard procedure. The Maine attorney general’s office will investigate, as it does whenever any police officer in Maine uses deadly force.
Parks has been investigated before for using deadly force. In 2017, Parks, state police Lt. Scott Ireland and Vassalboro police Chief Mark Brown shot and killed Kadhar Bailey and Ambroshia Fagre when Bailey rammed his pickup truck into a parked police cruiser. The attorney general’s office later ruled the three men were justified in using deadly force because they acted in self-defense, though concluding the death of 18-year-old Fagre of Oakland, who was a passenger, was accidental.
A federal appeals court in 2021 upheld a lower court’s decision to dismiss an excessive force lawsuit against Parks filed by Fagre’s mother, Jessica Fagre.
U.S. District Court Judge Lance Walker in March 2020 found that Parks, whose gunshots struck and killed Ambroshia Fagre, was immune from the lawsuit because he intended to fire at Bailey, 25, of Gardiner and that Parks was shielded under Maine’s qualified immunity law.
Ireland and Brown, who were also named in the excessive force lawsuit filed in February 2019, were dismissed from the lawsuit in May 2019 by Walker.
The 1st U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in Boston ruled no reasonable jury would conclude the officers knew Fagre was in the truck at the time of the shooting.