An Oakfield man shot by a Maine state trooper succumbed to his injuries at a Bangor hospital on Saturday.
John Corneil, 54, was shot Friday during an armed confrontation with state police outside a grocery store in Oakfield, according to Maine Department of Public Safety spokesman Stephen McCausland.
Corneil was initially transported to Houlton Regional Hospital for treatment of gunshot wounds, and was later transferred to Eastern Maine Medical Center in Bangor, where he underwent surgery and later died.
McCausland said an autopsy was scheduled for Sunday, and that the Maine attorney general’s office is investigating the officer-involved shooting, as is standard procedure.
Corniel was shot by Sgt. Chad Fuller of the state police outside the Oakfield Thriftway on Friday after Fuller and two other state troopers went to arrest Corneil in connection with an incident that happened in earlier in the week in Smyrna, Lt. Col. John Cote said last week.
Corneil allegedly challenged troopers outside the store with a handgun, which was later determined to be a pellet gun resembling a Beretta 9 mm pistol, according to Cote.
Fuller, a 20-year state police veteran, was placed on paid administrative leave while the shooting is investigated, as is standard procedure.
The Maine attorney general’s office investigates every time Maine police use deadly force to determine whether officers were legally justified in taking a life, with the findings eventually made public once the investigation concludes.
In its more than 100 reviews of officer-involved shootings since 1990, the attorney general’s office has never found that an officer should face criminal charges, according to a previously published report.
In March, the attorney general’s office ruled in two separate cases that state troopers and the Vassalboro police chief were legally justified in the fatal 2017 shooting of Kadhar Bailey, 25, and Ambroshia Fagre, 18, in a pickup truck that rammed a parked police cruiser in Vassalboro, and that a Portland police officer was legally justified in the 2017 shooting death of Chance David Baker, 22, at the Union Station Plaza on St. John Street where he was reportedly acting erratically and waving a long gun that was later determined to be an air rifle.
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