Mooresville Police officer shoots, kills man with gun in hospital parking lot

A police officer fatally shot a 56-year-old man early Wednesday in the parking lot of Lake Norman Regional Medical Center in Mooresville.

Mooresville officers responding to the call about a man saying he was suicidal were told by police dispatch, “Security saw him put a gun in his pocket,” according to emergency radio traffic obtained by The Charlotte Observer via Broadcastify on Wednesday morning.

Mooresville resident Robert William Berry “sustained multiple injuries” after an officer fired five rounds at him, according to a Mooresville Police Department news release.

Hospital staff called police saying a man told them he “was planning to do harm to himself” in his vehicle about 3:45 a.m., police said.

“Our initial report from the hospital staff was that he walked in, told the people in Admitting, or whoever you first see when you go into the hospital, that he was there to kill himself,” Police Chief Ron Campurciani said at a news conference. “And he was going to go do it in the parking lot.

“And then he walked outside, and that’s when they called us,” Campurciani said.

Police had no prior encounters with Berry and don’t know why he chose the hospital, the chief said.

It’s unclear how much time passed after officers arrived but the “shots fired” call is heard, shouted by one of the officers on their radio. The officer, according to the Broadcastify feed, asks dispatch to let doctors in the Emergency Room at the hospital know the man had been shot.

”Tell them to come out here in the parking lot. We got a gunshot victim out in their parking lot,” the officer is heard radioing.

Berry was holding a firearm outside his vehicle when officers arrived, police said. He complied at first when officers “issued multiple commands to drop the firearm,” police said.

Berry then picked up the firearm from the ground “and posed a threat to the officers,” according to the news release. That’s when an officer shot him, police said.

“Officers immediately rendered lifesaving aid and transferred the individual to the care of LNRMC professionals,” police said in the release.

Police will not release the officer’s name during the investigation into the shooting by the North Carolina State Bureau of Investigation, Campurciani said.

Asked by The Charlotte Observer how Berry posed a threat, the chief said he reviewed body-cam video footage multiple times and counted about seven or eight commands from police for him to drop the weapon.

“The weapon is dropped,” Campurciani said. “To me, it looks like it was dropped. It doesn’t look like it was placed on the ground. He bends over, squats down, picks up the weapon, stares at one of the officers to the right — that was the officer who ended up firing the shots — sits down against the tree, starts manipulating the weapon, rearms himself. That’s when the officer fired.”

Berry never said anything to the officers, the chief said.

“As far as mental health issues go, we get that,” Campurciani said. “... And I understand that’s sort of the talking points now and needs to be addressed. We agree with that, that there should be mental health professionals (involved) and they should be out there the same hours we are out there, to give people who are suffering the help that they need.

“As far as this incident goes,” the chief said, “I think we did what we could do. And for whatever reason, he dropped (the gun), but he rearmed himself, for whatever reason. And I don’t want to be callous, we’re armed with a lot of things, what we don’t have is a crystal ball.

“We’re all husbands and wives, and we have to go home, too. What he was doing, why he rearmed himself, what he was doing with the gun, was he cocking it, we don’t know. But if we wait, then we get hurt.

“It’s horrible,” he said. “There are no winners here. We wish it didn’t happen. But unfortunately, with this particular scenario, that’s just how it went.”

The officer who fired the shots is on administrative leave pending further investigation, as is standard protocol, police said.

The North Carolina State Bureau of Investigation is investigating the shooting as Mooresville Police conduct an administrative investigation.

This is a developing story. Check back for updates.