By Alex Barber Bangor Daily News
DOVER-FOXCROFT, Maine — Piscataquis County Sheriff John Goggin said he confronted Maine State Trooper Jon Brown after Brown shot and killed county dispatcher Michael Curtis on Tuesday morning.
"There were some words exchanged, mostly from me towards him," Goggin said Friday. "I never laid a hand on that person, whatsoever. I had words with him, but I never laid a hand on that person."
When asked if any charges were pending against him, Goggin said, "No, that’s not possible. There were no assaults or anything like that."
"I don’t have any info on that," Stephen McCausland, spokesman for the Department of Public Safety, said when asked if Goggin was involved in an altercation Tuesday morning.
Piscataquis County District Attorney Christopher Almy and Maine State Police Lt. Wesley Hussey referred questions on the matter to the Attorney General’s Office.
Brenda Kielty, a spokeswoman for the Maine Attorney General’s Office, said she couldn’t comment on Goggin’s remarks because of the ongoing investigation into Tuesday’s events.
"There’s all kinds of rumors going around about what happened that day," Goggin said in a telephone interview. "What people really don’t know, people will fill in between the lines and before you know it, it becomes the truth."
Curtis, 46, shot and killed maintenance worker Udo Schneider, 53, at around 9:30 a.m. Tuesday outside Hilltop Manor, a nursing facility where Schneider had worked for more than a decade.
Curtis, who was a dispatcher for the sheriff’s office, then drove to the Piscataquis County Fairgrounds, where he became engaged in a standoff with police before he was shot.
Brown, who has been with the state police since 2008, was placed on paid administrative leave pending the outcome of the investigation into the shooting, which is standard procedure, said Lt. Col. Raymond Bessette of the Maine State Police.
Meanwhile Friday, Kielty clarified how Curtis was fatally wounded.
"According to the medical examiner, the primary direction of the gunshot wound is right [side of Curtis’ body] to the left," she said. Previously, Kielty indicated that Curtis was shot in the front of the torso but didn’t list a direction of entry.
Mark Belserene, administrator of the state medical examiner’s office, said he wouldn’t comment any further on the wound.
Schneider died of multiple gunshot wounds to the torso, Kielty said Thursday.
Maine State Police say investigators are still trying to determine what prompted Curtis to shoot Schneider.
Copyright 2011 Bangor Daily News
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