| CULPEPER, Va. (WUSA) -- An eyewitness to a fatal police shooting in Culpeper, Virginia is contradicting the State Police version of the story. Kris Buchele says he saw a Culpeper Town Police officer shoot 54-year-old Patricia Cook to death in the Epiphany Catholic School parking lot at around 10 am Thursday, February 9. Buchele is a carpenter who was working on the house next door. He says he heard loud arguing outside and looked through a window where he had a clear view of the school parking lot. Cook was in her Jeep Wrangler . State police say Cook rolled up the window, catching the officer's arm inside, and then dragged him. Buchele says it didn't happen that way. He describes an encounter which looked and sounded like the officer shooting a person a point blank range, not because he feared for his life, but because the woman did not obey his order to stop rolling up the window. "He was right next to the vehicle. He had one hand on the door handle and one hand on his weapon. And she was rolling the window up. And they were exiting out of the parkng lot. The window was half way up he said 'stop or I'll shoot.' I really didn't think he was going to do it. But she got the window all the way up and that's when he shot. And then she took a left out of the parking lot here and he stepped out in the street and fired five more times," said Buchele. |
