Controversy mounts in police shooting of housewife

Controversy continues to swirl around the hazy circumstances of Thursday’s fatal police shooting of a 54-year-old housewife in a school parking lot on East Street even as the account of a key eyewitness fluctuated, the Virginia State Police remained tight-lipped and a local parent revealed new details.

Patricia Ann Cook, of Culpeper, died on the scene after an unidentified Culpeper Police officer fired multiple shots into and at her Jeep Wrangler.

The VSP, lead agency in the ongoing investigation, put out brief releases about the incident Thursday and Friday. Spokeswoman Corinne Geller said nothing additional would be reported until the investigation concludes. She said that was several weeks away.

According to the VSP, the officer’s arm was trapped in the driver’s side window of the Wrangler and he was being dragged as Cook drove away. The VSP would not release the model year of the Wrangler or disclose whether it had power windows or manual windows as are more typical in Jeeps.

The officer’s name is also being withheld.

At the scene within an hour after the shooting, eyewitness Kris Buchele told the Star-Exponent the officer’s arm was in the window as Cook started to “roll it up.”

He never said the officer’s arm was trapped as the VSP reported.

“The officer yelled ‘stop, stop or I’m going to shoot,’” Buchele said.

That’s when the officer fired the first time at Cook – at point blank range, the witness said.

A CSE reporter on scene overheard Buchele say the same to police, who interviewed him extensively.

But when WUSA News 9 interviewed the witness the following day for Friday’s 5 o’clock news, Buchele’s story changed slightly.

He told the Washington, D.C. station that the officer was standing right next to the parked vehicle with one hand on his weapon and the other hand on the handle of the driver’s side door. He did not say it was in the driver’s side window as he told the Star-Exponent.

When Cook started to roll the window up, Buchele said, “He said, ‘Stop, or I’ll shoot.’ I didn’t think he was going to do it.” When Cook had the window completely “rolled up,” the witness told the news station, the officer pulled the trigger.

“She took a left out of the parking lot, and he fired six more times,” Buchele said on TV.

It remains unknown which of the gunshots caused Cook’s death, or at what point she died. That will come out with the release of autopsy report being handled by the Medical Examiner’s Office in Manassas.

When the VSP completes its investigation, the findings will be turned over to the commonwealth’s attorney for review and prosecutorial decision, Geller said. The commonwealth will determine if the use of deadly force was justified, and whether to prosecute.

Meanwhile, the Culpeper community continues to express rage, disbelief and sorrow in the wake of these tragic events.

A memorial service for Cook will be held Sunday at 3 p.m. at Culpeper United Methodist Church, where she was active in the children’s ministry. Cook was born in Alton, Illinois, and is survived by a husband, Gary, mother Carol Weglier, and brother John Weglier, both of New Jersey.

On the telephone pole where Mrs. Cook crashed has appeared a small memorial in the form of two bouquets, one with a card from a nearby restaurant.

But why she was in the nearby parking lot of the middle school at Epiphany Catholic Thursday morning remains a mystery to many, including Michael Watts of Culpeper, whose children attend the small private school that fronts on Main Street.

“As a parent, I have questions about what the woman was doing at our school. Why was she walking around the middle school and why wouldn’t she leave when asked by school staff?” he said.

Watts said he appreciated the routine safety precautions in place at Epiphany and seeing them smoothly implemented during Thursday’s shooting, including putting school facilities on lockdown.

“I’m glad the staff has been trained to be aware of potential security threats and that the police were so quick to respond to a call from the school,” he said. “Like everyone else, I wonder exactly what happened once the police officer got there and why it required a shooting to resolve.”

Overall, Watts said, he is pleased his kids were kept safe and secure through it all — both physically and emotionally. He said the school brought in counselors Friday for kids who needed it.

“For such a small school in such a small community, Epiphany really seemed to have their act together,” he said.

Gary Cook, a Vietnam veteran who commutes to the D.C. area every day, said that early on the morning before his wife was shot to death she told him she was going to do some shopping that day.

Witness Adam Forster, who lives on North East Street, said he heard loud yelling “for about a minute,” before eight or nine shots were fired. It is unknown what the officer and Cook argued about, or if they even did.