Police
17-Year-Old Girl Fatally Shot By Police At Texas Police Station
A 17-year-old girl was shot and killed by three Texas police officers after entering police station to speak with an officer.
A 17-year-old girl has been shot and killed by three police officers in a Longview Texas Police Department.
Kristiana Coignard arrived at the station around 6:30 p.m. and asked to talk to an officer. Police say the girl was “brandishing a weapon” before she was shot four times.
The three Texas police officers who shot, who have not been identified, have been put on leave while an investigation is in progress.
The investigation of Coignard’s death is now being handled by the Texas Rangers.
The fatal shooting is obscure with mystery. Why? Because the officials could not “confirm the type of weapon Coignard brandished at the officers.”
Beyond the alleged, unspecified weapon, virtually no details about the events that immediately preceded Coignard’s death have been released.
Coignard was living in Longview with her Aunt, Heather Robertson. In an interview with ThinkProgress, Robertson raised questions about the circumstances of Coignard’s death.
“I think it was a cry for help. I think they could have done something. They are grown men. I think there is something they are not telling us.”
Robertson also told Thinkprogress, that her niece had been struggling with mental illness, including depression and bipolar disorder, since her mother died when she was four. She had been hospitalized twice in recent years after suicide attempts.
One time, she tried to hang herself. Another time, she drank toilet bowl cleaner.
Since arriving in Longview in December, Coignard had been taking medication and regularly seeing a therapist. She had no criminal record and “was only violent with herself, ” Robertson said.