Just before 11pm on November 8, 911 operators received calls from an ambulance crew and other witnesses reporting a man waving a gun was near Trinity Health on Maple Street and Jefferson Avenue SE.
At a press conference Friday, Prosecutor Chris Becker showed video from Grand Rapids police in-car and body cameras showing officers arriving to find the man now identified as 38-year-old Henry Wymer holding what appeared to be a gun to his head.
“There’s multiple officers saying “drop the gun, drop the gun, drop the gun. Everybody believes there’s a gun involved here, and the individual is now pointing the gun at officers.”
After one officer is heard over the radio shouting, “He’s pointing the gun at me,” three other officers fired shots. Wymer was struck seven times by gunshots. He was taken to the hospital where he died.
“The question then becomes: did he have a gun? He did not. This is what he had.”
A lighter designed to look like a gun. The prosecutor determined it would appear to any reasonable person that Mr. Wymer had a gun, and under that belief, the officers could legally use deadly force to prevent death or harm to others.
“One of their officers says, ‘he’s pointing that gun at me,’ they’ve got to make a decision to protect their officers and that’s what they did here.”
An investigation by Michigan State Police also revealed Wymer had a history of mental health issues and was released from treatment at Trinity Health earlier that day.
After he died, investigators found Wymer carried several documents on him including a handwritten “last will and testament” and notes written in crayon thanking the GRPD and referencing suicide.
