A nearly 20-year veteran of the Greenwood Police Department has been quickly cleared by the prosecutor in a police-action shooting.
Prosecutor Brad Cooper reviewed the Saturday shooting, including video from the officer’s body camera that showed the shooting was justified, he said.
“I reviewed the video and have not seen a more clear-cut case of the proper use of deadly force in my 22 years of reviewing police action shootings,” Cooper said in a statement.
Cooper said he considers the case to be closed, the release said.
Greenwood Police Sgt. Eric McElhaney shot and killed a man who had stabbed his girlfriend and was preparing to stab her again, police said.
“Officer McElhaney’s quick and wholly justified actions saved the victim’s life,” Cooper said in the statement.
McElhaney repeatedly ordered Samson G. Varner, 36, to drop the knife and step away from the woman, Emily Glass, 35, who was on the floor, suffering from multiple stab wounds. Varner stepped back, but then raised the knife above his head and lunged toward Glass. That’s when McElhaney fired several shots, killing Varner, police have said.
Glass had been stabbed multiple times, including in her back, almost severing her spinal cord and collapsing her lung.
An autopsy showed Varner was struck five times. McElhaney fired six times, Greenwood Police Assistant Chief Matt Fillenwarth said.
“Eric couldn’t have performed better than what he did,” Fillenwarth said.
McElhaney has been with the Greenwood Police Department since 1997, and has been a police officer since 1993. He has received multiple awards, and is a known marksman, serving on the SWAT team and as a firearms instructor, Fillenwarth said.
This is the second police-action shooting McElhaney has been involved in. Both were ruled as justified by the prosecutor.
In 2007, McElhaney was seriously wounded when Kyle Collins, 18, shot at him and another officer during a traffic stop off County Line Road. McElhaney was shot five times, and fired back at Collins, killing him. After months of recovery, McElhaney returned to the police department as a detective and then as a road officer.
McElhaney remains on paid leave, and the police department is continuing doing interviews to finish the internal investigation of the shooting, Fillenwarth said.
