Hampton officer Ian Connors was identified by the attorney general’s office as the policeman who fired his gun at a suspected shooter during a holiday weekend this summer.
Law enforcement had responded to a report of shots fired near a convenience store at 29 Ocean Boulevard in the early hours of Sunday, July 5, where they found a 23-year-old man and a 25-year-old woman suffering from gunshot wounds, according to the attorney general’s office.
Police located Tyshawn Cooper, a 21-year-old from Taylors, South Carolina, who matched the description of the suspect about a block away.
During that interaction, Cooper raised a gun and shot himself in the head. The police officer, Connors, fired one bullet simultaneously, authorities said.
Cooper died at the scene, and the state medical examiner ruled his death a suicide. The man and woman who were shot are still in the hospital, according to a Monday afternoon update from the attorney general’s office.
Cooper was serving on active duty in the U.S. Navy as an information systems technician on the U.S.S Hampton. State agencies are coordinating their investigation with the Naval Criminal Investigative Service.
The attorney general’s office investigates every use of deadly force by law enforcement and will do so in this case even though Connors’s shot wasn’t the one that killed Cooper.
State law allows police to use lethal force if they reasonably believe their lives or the lives of others are in danger, and the attorney general regularly rules that they are legally justified.
This was the seventh use of deadly force by New Hampshire police officers this year.
