WALDPORT, Ore. — A grand jury has ruled that a Lincoln County Sheriff's deputy was justified when he shot and killed a woman who pointed an AK-47 rifle at him during an incident in Waldport on Nov. 10.
The deputy, Ben Cloud, has been with the Lincoln County Sheriff's Office for 11 years. The jury issued its ruling Friday, according to a news release from Lincoln County District Attorney Jenna Wallace, after hearing testimony from 11 witnesses over two days.
According to a summary released by Wallace's office, the incident began at 4:50 p.m., several hours before the deadly shooting, when a resident called 911 to report that a woman, later identified as 38-year-old Virginia Lee Morris, was screaming outside their home.
Morris called 911 about 15 minutes later and said her neighbors had been recording her and trying to provoke her, and that she would have to open fire if officers did not respond. She refused to answer when asked if she was armed, and became more aggressive over the course of the call.
A deputy then called Morris, who said she had been drinking to celebrate the anniversary of the founding of the U.S. Marine Corps, according to the news release. The deputy said Morris was calm at the start but grew angry as the conversation continued and ultimately told the deputy she was "not concerned with shedding blood if she had to," Wallace wrote.
About an hour after her first call, Morris called 911 again and threatened her neighbors. Half an hour after that, a worker with a veterans crisis line called police to report that Morris had contacted them. The worker described her as homicidal, according to the news release, and said she had told them that it was time for her neighbors to die.
The worker called back just after 7 p.m. and said Morris had called again and told them she had a loaded AK-47 and would shoot anyone who knocked on her door. Four minutes later, another neighbor called 911 and said his girlfriend, who lived next door to Morris, had heard a single gunshot from inside her home five minutes earlier.
Several more calls came in at 7:39 p.m. reporting multiple gunshots on the property. Deputies were already on their way at that point, and Cloud arrived first at around 7:46 p.m., according to the news release.
While he was waiting for more deputies to arrive, Morris walked out of her home holding a rifle. Cloud ordered Morris to drop the rifle, but she turned and pointed it at him. He responded by firing his own rifle at her. Investigators later concluded that he fired 13 rounds.
Morris was pronounced dead while being transported to a hospital, and an autopsy later confirmed she died from gunshot wounds. Deputies found a loaded AK-47 where she had been standing, and investigators concluded that she had fired her gun at least 10 times before Cloud arrived. No neighbors, bystanders or deputies were injured in the incident.
The grand jury concluded that Cloud's use of deadly force was reasonable to defend himself against the threatened or imminent use of deadly force, and that he had no safe or feasible alternatives such as verbal de-escalation available at the time.
