Nampa man killed by police identified. He lunged at citizen with knife, not at officer
Authorities have identified the 37-year-old man who a Nampa police officer shot and killed Wednesday.
The Canyon County Sheriff’s Office, which is leading the Critical Incident Task Force investigation into the fatal shooting, said Nampa resident Adam Michael Trejo was the man who fled St. Luke’s Nampa Medical Center, attempted to steal multiple vehicles and stole two knives from a nearby restaurant before a Nampa police officer shot and killed him, according to a news release issued Thursday.
Nampa Interim Police Chief Curt Shankel previously told the Idaho Statesman that Trejo might have been having a mental health problem.
“He appeared to be kind of in a crisis, a mental crisis of some sort,” Shankel said by phone.
The news release also corrected a piece of information about the shooting. Shankel previously said Trejo “came at an officer” with a knife, but the sheriff’s office said that initial reports were incorrect and that Trejo “lunged aggressively” toward a nearby citizen after police confronted him, which caused the Nampa officer to shoot.
The officer has been placed on paid administrative leave, which is standard policy. The Critical Incident Task Force is expected to release the officer’s name, but Shankel told the Statesman that the involved officer has more than five years of police experience, which includes a year with Nampa police.
The Idaho Statesman has reached out to the sheriff’s office to ask when the officer might be identified.
“These are the types of situations that law enforcement never wants to find themselves in, but we all swore an oath to protect the community, and it’s one we take very seriously,” Canyon County Sheriff Kieran Donahue said in the release. “Unfortunately, these types of life-and-death incidents arise where officers are required to make split-second decisions.”
It’s been nearly two years since the Nampa Police Department was involved in a shooting. In 2021, the department was involved in three police shootings, two of which were fatal, according to a database maintained by the Idaho Statesman.
This was the first police shooting in Canyon County this year. There have been eight law enforcement shootings in Ada County, though not all of those had a fatality.
There have been nine fatal shootings throughout Idaho, including six in the Treasure Valley, according to the Statesman database.
