STANLEY, N.C. — The 911 calls that were made before an officer-involved shooting in Gaston County earlier this month have been released.
Those calls reveal that officers possibly responded to a person having a mental health issue that ended with gunfire.
While no body camera footage of this incident has been released, the Gaston County Police Department has provided details on how the situation escalated.
The incident began on December 7 with a tense 911 call from a home on Beau Drive in Stanley.
The caller told the dispatcher that her husband had stabbed himself. The caller then pleaded with the man who had hurt himself and repeatedly told him she loved him.
The situation then escalated after the caller revealed to the dispatcher that there were children inside the home.
“Don’t do it. Don’t do it, honey. Everything’s okay. Everything’s okay. You have three beautiful children and we all love you,” the caller said.
Two officers then arrived over five minutes after the caller hung up with 911.
Gaston County police said 42-year-old Eric Edwin Bianchi was holding a machete when officers arrived. They said they gave him multiple commands to drop it, but instead, he moved toward them.
This is when officers perceived this as an imminent deadly threat, and one of them fatally shot Bianchi.
“I just remember hearing gunshots. It sounded like maybe four or five,” said neighbor Crystal Howard.
Howard told Channel 9 that her backyard adjoins with Bianchi. She said officers later told her that her home was in the line of fire.
“They had to walk to my backyard and check and make sure there weren’t no bullet holes in the back of the house,” Howard said.
She said she didn’t know the family well, but would often hear children in the home screaming in a way that didn’t sound like playing.
“A real, loud hollering cry like they were being hurt, but I didn’t know and so I couldn’t do nothing about it,” Howard explained.
The officer who shot Bianchi has been with the department for nine years and is assigned to a high-risk, specialized unit that often responds to people with weapons.
Officers told Channel 9 that the officer had only fired their service weapon twice. The North Carolina State Bureau of Investigation deemed both of those incidents as justified.
Both officers involved in this shooting have been placed on administrative leave while external and internal reviews are being conducted.
VIDEO: Body camera footage released of officer-involved shooting in Pineville
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