Dante Kittrell

Dante Kittrell, 51, was shot three times and killed by South Bend, Indiana police officers on July 29, 2022, during a roughly 45-minute standoff near Coquillard Elementary School after a school employee called 911 to report an armed man threatening to commit suicide. Kittrell, in the midst of what his family's attorney described as a mental health crisis, repeatedly told officers things like “I'm ready to die” and “if I point my weapon at you, you have to do your job, right?” before pulling out what appeared to be a handgun; four of the 18 responding officers opened fire. The object was later found to be a highly detailed replica of a Glock 19. The St. Joseph County Prosecutor's Office ruled the shooting a justifiable homicide in August 2022, finding it could not prove beyond a reasonable doubt that officers had not acted in self-defense. No one has ever been charged in Kittrell's death.

South Bend, IN · St. Joseph County County

• 2022: Case opens — victim reported missing or found.
• Documented milestones (renewed investigation, media coverage, family advocacy) to be added as sourced.
• Present: case remains unresolved. No named suspect has been convicted.

• The 911 call, the standoff, and the shooting, per the St. Joseph County Prosecutor's Office's public findings and body and in-car camera footage the South Bend Police Department released publicly.
• A Coquillard School employee called 911 at 11:36 a.m. reporting an armed man threatening suicide near the school's baseball fields; officers arrived within four minutes but did not initially see a weapon, and two crisis negotiators were requested to the scene.
• Over roughly 45 minutes, Kittrell told officers he wanted to die and made statements including “end this,” “fire it,” and asking whether officers would be forced to act if he pointed his weapon at them, before pulling out what appeared to be a handgun at 12:29 p.m.
• Four of the 18 officers who responded — Randall Goering, Joseph Mitchell, Anthony Dertz, and Neil Graber — fired their weapons, striking Kittrell three times: a graze wound to the head, a wound to the torso, and a wound to the hip.
• The item Kittrell pointed at officers was recovered and examined afterward, revealing it to be a highly detailed replica airsoft version of a tan Glock 19 9mm handgun, not a functional firearm.
• A joint investigation by the St. Joseph County and Mishawaka Police Departments, including ballistics testing, witness interviews, and body and in-car camera footage, was turned over to the St. Joseph County Prosecutor's Office.
• The prosecutor's office ruled the shooting a justifiable homicide in August 2022, finding it could not prove beyond a reasonable doubt that the officers were not acting in self-defense or the defense of others, since they had no way of knowing the replica was not a real firearm; no charges were filed.
• The family's attorney, Sean Drew, publicly stated that officers with proper mental health crisis training should have recognized Kittrell's statements and behavior as a suicidal crisis rather than a homicidal threat, and criticized the number of officers who responded as overwhelming for that kind of encounter.

• Whether a smaller, more specifically crisis-trained response could have de-escalated the encounter without gunfire, as the family's attorney has argued, was never independently tested or addressed in the prosecutor's justifiable-homicide finding, which focused only on whether the officers' subjective belief in a threat was reasonable at the moment they fired.
• The specific individual roles and split-second decisions of each of the four officers who fired, as opposed to the general finding that the group's action was justified, have not been broken out in available public reporting.
• Why 18 officers, including two dedicated crisis negotiators, were unable to de-escalate a declared suicidal crisis without gunfire in 45 minutes has not been addressed in any public departmental policy review located in the sources reviewed for this summary.

• WNDU — “Deadly shooting of Dante Kittrell deemed police justifiable”
• ABC57 — “Shooting of Dante Kittrell by police ruled justifiable homicide”
• WVPE (NPR Michiana) — “Fatal July police shooting of Dante Kittrell ruled justified, prosecutor's office says”
• Project Cold Case
• Murder Accountability Project
• NamUs