Attorney General Aaron Frey has determined that three Augusta police officers were justified when they shot and killed 23-year-old Liban Mohamed, of Lewiston, during an incident in the capital city in January.
The Attorney General’s Office investigates all uses of deadly force by police.
On Jan. 21, just after 11 p.m. a man called Augusta police to report that a Black man had broken into his apartment on Northern Avenue with a gun and was holding his girlfriend inside, according to an account in the AG’s report. The caller said he had jumped out the window and called 911. The apartment is described as being on the third floor of a multi-unit building with exterior covered decks and stairways.
Four Augusta police officers went to the apartment building. An officer from the Capitol Police arrived later but was not involved in the shooting.
The Augusta officers knocked on the door of the apartment and announced themselves as police, according to the account in the AG’s report, and after several minutes, a woman exited the apartment and confirmed there was a Black man she didn’t know in the apartment.
As police were questioning the woman, an officer on the ground allegedly saw the man breaking out a window of the apartment in an apparent attempt to escape and saw that he had a gun. When police shouted at him to show his hands, he retreated then came back to the window and shot at the officers, according to the report.
The man, later identified as Mohamed, then went to the front door and shot at the officers and the woman there, according to the report. Two of the officers at the door, Sgt. Derek Daley and Officer Jonathan Young, along with Officer Matthew Gurney on the ground, all of the Augusta Police Department, returned fire. Three bullets hit Mohamed, who died at the scene with a 9mm handgun next to him, according to the report.
No one else was reported injured.
Frey found that when the officers shot at Mohamed, they reasonably believed he “posed an imminent threat of serious bodily injury or death to himself, other officers, and at least one civilian at the scene.”
The Maine AG’s office has never ruled against a police officer who has used deadly force.
Several fatal shootings by police have been challenged in civil suits, including the death of 18-year-old Gregori Jackson, who was shot five times by Waldoboro police officer Zachary Curtis in 2007, and 18-year-old Ambroshia “Amber” Fagre, who was shot by Maine State Police Trooper Jeffrey Parks in 2017.
