RICHMOND, VA. — A Virginia State Trooper was killed Thursday in a Grayhound bus terminal by a man he was chatting with who suddenly opened fire in an apparently unprovoked attack before law enforcement shot him dead, Virginia State Police announced Thursday night.
Killed was Chad Dermyer, 37, a Marine Corps veteran and a native of Jackson, Michigan.
After shooting Dermyer, the man continued to fire until he was shot by two other troopers, police said. The suspect was taken to VCU Medical Center, where he died, police said.
Dermyer, who graduated from Virginia State Police Academy in 2014, was taken to VCU Medical Center, where he later died, police said.
Too many area police officers have died. It sounds like Trooper Dermyer was simply talking to a man when that man turned around opened fire on the trooper.
We wonder why cops sometimes make mistakes. It will be interesting to learn more about the perpetrator. What would make him kill a cop? Other people have been seriously maimed also.
Tragic. My understanding is the Troopers were going through a practical application training, where they get real-world interdiction practice, when they encountered a real-world bad-guy. Chicago ex-con, felon, who told relatives that he’d go out in a blaze of glory, before he would ever go back to prison.
The trooper wasn’t wearing a vest.
As someone who has gone through formal training programs, I can say that no matter how realistic, there is still a degree of artificiality, and this impacts your mind-set. You are focused more on applying what you learned, or how you will be evaluated, than you are at what is actually happening in front of you. I encountered this in the Marines, especially. This Trooper probably had a similar experience during his Marine Corps service.
Now the odds of encountering a serious bad-guy are rare, anyways. The odds of encountering one during a training exercise, rarer still.
He wasn’t wearing a vest…this is why I believe that the fact that the trooper was conducting a training exercise had him in a “Training Mindset” and not an “Operational Mindset”. The mindset of the bad-guy seemed operational from the get-go.
Too many LEOs are being killed. One is too many. 3 is outrageous.
Both of our survivors have been released from the hospital here in PWC.
Keeping the Trooper and his family in our hearts and prayers is not enough.
When are we going to try and grasp what is happening – it seems like there is an uptick in violence against LEO’s – doing nothing about it but it seems like it is not going away.
Very tragic.
If the trooper wasn’t in uniform, do you think the killer knew that he was being engaged by a police officer? Isn’t this a legal stand-your-ground situation of self defense? Both dead people were armed and in a confrontation and one was quicker and shot first. Aren’t these the rules of the 2A jungle that everyone has a right to kill someone else who they fear is about to kill them?
He was in uniform, I think. He wasn’t wearing a bullet-proof vest.
The trooper was indeed in uniform. They were wearing their “tactical” uniform, as opposed to the duty uniform you see them in on the road.
Ed, you are taking out of your rear-end again. Very disturbing.
Steve, how do you like our new makeover?
A tactical uniform is what…a blue shirt and cargo pants? Unless it had the words “State Police” emblazoned on it there remains in my mind whether the killer was aware that it was a police officer and therefore, as implied, made an attack on police. Citizens expect police officers to have on bulletproof vests and to have insignia identifying themselves and for state police the smoky bear hat. The killer likely thought the officer was a rival gang member out to rob him.
If we use the 2A to give police wide latitude in making the wrong split second decisions on whether someone is armed and dangerous enough to kill, then we can’t be upset when citizens make the same mistake. Or, we could just say that everyone who is armed in public and isn’t clearly marked as police or security is dangerous to the health and welfare of all the people in a 100 yard radius and therefore is a potentially violent criminal and should be treated as such.
I expect people not to shoot anyone. Why is your bar so low? This guy was a thug and a toad, according to court and police records.
Ed, why do you keep making ups excuses for people who clearly are bad people, by mores and values of our society?
Ed, the more I think about it, the more ridiculous I think your statement is. Did you have really negative police interactions when you were young?
You are willing to make up excuses for just about any law-breaker. Do you think its normal to go around shooting anyone in a bus station?
I don’t expect all cops to be clearly marked. I understand that some go under cover. I don’t care if Trooper Dermyer was clearly marked or not. He didn’t deserve to die. The shooter did deserve to die. Are you going to start crying me a river over that jackass?
It is helpful in checking if we have prejudice built into our institutions of justice to reverse the participants in an news event and see if that changes our minds about what is right. When the white policeman shot the black undercover officer most thought it tragic but understandable because he wasn’t in uniform. I wonder if in the Richmond bus terminal, if the officer was black and in hip-hop clothing and the subject of interest turned killer was a white kid just back from a military deployment with PTSD and carrying lots of cash, if the sympathy would have been different.
Of course I’m not a fan of people using handguns for self defense so in my world this situation would not have been tragic because no one would have had a handgun. Armed defense should occur only with long guns as handguns are defective instruments.
Now what is the likelihood of that happening?
Why would a black officer be wearing hip-hop clothing on the job?
Speaking of toadies, this hit the front page of the WaPo this morning:
Marcus Vick has had every advantage yet he prefers to be a thug. He is a Tech grad. He has a famous brother. Yet its still must be fun to assault cops.