Nashville officer in shooting loses police power amid review

NASHVILLE, Tenn. (AP) — Nashville’s police chief has stripped an officer of his policing authority after he fired the final two shots to end a fatal highway standoff in which nine officers opened fire on a man holding a box cutter.

Authorities on Thursday afternoon had pleaded with 37-year-old Landon Eastep during the traffic-stopping encounter to surrender.

They kept him at gunpoint, killing the man when he pulled another shiny object from his pocket and pointed it at police as if ready to shoot.

That object turned out not to be a gun. Attorney Joy Kimbrough called the shooting a “firing squad execution.”

The Tennessee Bureau of Investigation is examining what happened.

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