PRESQUE ISLE, Maine — A Presque Isle man with a knife was shot and killed by police Friday in an altercation that the Maine attorney general’s office is now investigating.
According to the Presque Isle Police Department, 25-year-old Brentant Lahey “confronted and threatened” officer Kyle White with a knife when White and two other officers responded to a disturbance at a Presque Isle mobile home around 12:38 a.m. Friday.
Two other individuals at the Skyway Street residence had called 911 describing a man threatening them with a knife, according to Presque Isle police Chief Matt Irwin.
White shot Lahey after the man threatened the officer with a knife inside the mobile home, Irwin said.
Emergency medical personnel responded to the scene and Lahey was pronounced dead, Irwin said.
Irwin said he could not release more information about the case since the attorney general’s office is investigating, as is routine whenever police use deadly force.
It is unclear how many shots police fired, or if the officers deployed a taser or other attempts at subduing Lahey. It also is unclear whether Lahey lived at the residence.
The department has placed White on paid administrative leave for at least two weeks, Irwin said.
This is the second officer-involved fatal shooting in Presque Isle in the last year, and the fourth in Aroostook County in the last three years. In December, the attorney general concluded that another Presque Isle police officer acted in self-defense when he shot and killed an intoxicated man, who was armed with a knife, last May.
The attorney general’s office also continues to investigate the deaths of three people fatally shot by police in Maine in the last two months. Two alleged suspects in daytime burglaries in Kennebec County were killed last month after one of the suspects rammed his truck into a police cruiser, according to police. A Portland police officer also fatally shot a local man brandishing a rifle-style pellet gun outside a Subway sandwich shop on St. John Street in February.
