KENTWOOD, Mich. — A Kentwood officer is on paid administrative leave after shooting and killing a man who injured two of his roommates with a knife earlier in the night.
Police identified the man killed as 60-year-old Kim Douglass Ropp.
Officers were called to a home on Grantwood Ave SE on Sunday night, just before 10:30 p.m., regarding a man who was stabbing his roommates.
“He was trying to stab anybody that was in his pathway… Me, my roommates, my company. He was trying to have war with everybody that was in this house last night,” Vincent Vallo, one of the men injured in the incident Sunday night, told FOX 17.
Vallo and several of his roommates were simply relaxing in their home Sunday night, listening to music, when Ropp marched in from the other room, believing the men were talking about him behind his back.
“We never mentioned the man's name... Wasn’t nobody thinking about him,” Vallo explained Monday afternoon?
Ropp focused his anger on one of the roommates.
“They got into it, had an altercation,” Vallo said.
“After he got stabbed, he sat down and slumped over, he was in shock. He didn't even know he was hurt at first, we had to tell him, like, dude you've got blood coming out the side of your stomach.”
Vallo and his roommates called 911.
Ropp and Vallo were fighting over the knife, said to be a long kitchen blade, when officers arrived.
“I'm trying not to get stabbed, I'm holding up the knife.. So, I see the police through the screen door, it was a sigh of relief at the moment," Vallo explained as he stood in his kitchen, near a side door to the house.
Officers fired bean bag rounds at the men, knocking Vallo to the ground. Ropp was not deterred and allegedly continued to charge towards the officers.
Vallo says it sounded like they shot Ropp 5 or 6 times in the doorway.
Vallo says there was a significant amount of blood for them to clean up once they returned home from giving statements at the Kent County Sheriff's Department late Sunday night.
He now has a large circular welt on his side from the bean bag projectile, as well as cuts to his hands where he grabbed Ropp's knife, attempting to wrestle it away.
“I’m still baffled by what happened," Vallo said.
"I'm gonna be okay eventually... I'm hoping everybody around me is okay. I hope that his family is gonna be okay... My homeboy that got hurt, oh yeah, definitely hope he is gonna be okay.”
You can donate towards Vallo's medical expenses at this Gofundme page.
