Don’t play Russian Roulette, kids
An off-duty US cop has been pronounced dead after she was shot in the chest during a game of Russian roulette with her colleagues.
The officers, they say, were playing a deadly game – pointing a gun with one round in the chamber at each other and then pulling the trigger.
Katlyn Alix, a 24-year-old Army veteran had spent two years on the force and died in hospital.
A citizen in the area told the St. Louis Post-Dispatch that she heard calls of “Oh my god! Somebody help.” After the shot was fired.
Two men were seen by locals dragging a bleeding woman into a vehicle and then speeding away, but unlike most gun crimes, it was a St. Louis police car.
At first, police called it an “accidental” killing after an officer “mishandled” a gun. But St. Louis prosecutors judged the incident differently on Friday evening.
Officer Nathaniel Hendren, 29, has been charged with involuntary manslaughter and armed criminal action, according to documents released late on Friday by Kimberly Gardner, the St. Louis circuit attorney.
“This is a devastating incident for Katlyn Alix’s husband, family, parents and for our entire community,” said Kimberly Gardner, the St. Louis circuit attorney.
“I will hold people accountable regardless of their profession, public status or station in life.”
Alix’s mother, Aimee Chadwick, told KMOV: “She always told me, ‘Mom, if I die, it’s doing something I love to do.”
“So, it made me feel a little better. But this does not make me feel better.”
This tragedy comes at a time when St. Louis police are under heavy scrutiny, after four officers were indicted by a federal grand jury in November in the brutal beating of a 22-year police veteran who had been posing as a protester during 2017 demonstrations over a fatal police shooting.
