In late October, an Indiana fugitive was shot down after he charged at officers with a knife in hand. “The Oct. 25 shooting of an Indiana fugitive by two Fort Smith police officers has been deemed justified by Sebastian County Prosecuting Attorney Daniel Shue.” 

Michael Lee Fairburn, a fugitive out of Indiana and a “violent sex offender”, was shot by two officers in self-defense. He had hidden out in a wooded area across from Shamrock Liquor in Fort Smith after he was chased by an officer the day before. That same officer had made the arrest the next day, and said that “Fairburn allegedly [found] a BB gun and ‘several knives that were stuck in a piece of wood.’” The fugitive refused to drop his knife and said that he would kill all of the officers.

In the article by 5NEWS, they state that, “Shue said that after tasing Fairburn was unsuccessful, officers were ‘confronted with an armed and dangerous assailant … I could just as easily be writing a letter to the family of [the officers] regarding their homicide as I am trying to evaluate the use of force by an officer to defend himself against one of our citizens.’” It also says, “The day after the shooting, Arkansas State Police told 5NEWS that Fairburn was expected to survive after undergoing surgery at UAMS in Little Rock;” and that “Neither officer who shot Fairburn was found to have used unreasonable deadly force.’