ATLANTA — Campus police shot and killed a Georgia Tech student who they say was advancing on officers with a knife.
Scout Schultz, 21, refused to put down a knife and kept moving toward the officers early Sunday outside a dormitory, according to a statement from the Georgia Bureau of Investigation, using the given name, Scott.
WSB-TV reported that the item, still on the ground when the station arrived, appeared to be a half-open multi-tool without any tools extended.
Officers tried repeatedly to get Schultz to drop the knife, but he refused to do so, according to the GBI.
Two students shared video of the incident with the station. Officers can be heard repeatedly shouting, “Drop the knife!”
Aaron Thurston told the station, “He was yelling like, ’Hey, shoot me!”’
However, that wasn’t audible in the video on the station’s website.
“He took a couple more steps forward – it wasn’t a lunge; it was a couple more steps forward. And then the officer fired,” Thurston said.
The fourth-year computer engineering student used the name Scout and preferred the pronouns “they” and “them” rather than “him” or “her.”
“I’m bisexual, nonbinary and intersex,” Schultz wrote in a Pride Alliance profile.
“They have been the driving force behind Pride Alliance for the past two years,” the group’s board wrote in an online post on their webpage Sunday. “They pushed us to do more events and a larger variety events, and we would not be the organization we are known as without their constant hard work and dedication.”
The neuter plural is because Schultz identified as neither male nor female: “non-binary,” their mother said.
Lynne Schultz told the newspaper that her oldest child was a brilliant student despite numerous medical issues including depression, and had twice attempted suicide.
Attorney L. Chris Stewart told the newspaper that he thinks Schultz “was having a mental breakdown and didn’t know what to do.”
He said he doesn’t think Schultz was attempting “suicide by police,” and officers should have used nonlethal force. “The area was secured. There was no one around at risk,” Stewart said.
Most of Scout’s stress was related to school, their mother said.
“Scout was always a perfectionist,” Lynne Schultz said. “They always worried (they were) going to fail a test but got all A’s and only two B’s at Tech.”
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