A police officer will be fired after disturbing body camera footage showed him shoot and kill a troubled man who was “naked, stumbling and unarmed,” according to his police chief.
Louisville, Kentucky police officer Nathan Stotts fatally shot Martin Nitzken, Jr., 27, late Saturday after being called to a report that he’d attacked his girlfriend and two of her friends while they watched TV.
His department released bodycam and drone footage Tuesday while announcing Stotts is being fired and made the subject of a criminal investigation.
“In this video, you will see a man who is naked, stumbling and unarmed — and is shot by a police officer,” Louisville Metropolitan Department Chief Paul Humphrey said, making clear he was alarmed at his officer’s actions.
“Sometimes we have to make decisions to take people’s lives, and this was not one of them.”
The footage shows Stotts approaching Nitzken as he is on all fours and completely naked, and repeatedly yelling at him to show his hands.
Nitzken suddenly gets up and ignores several orders to “stop walking towards” Stotts — who fires a single shot as the unarmed man puts out a hand as he stumbles toward him.
Nitzken crumples to the ground with a moan as blood spills from his body. He lays silently bleeding out while Stotts keeps his gun pointed at him and fails to render aid for nearly four minutes until EMS arrives, the video shows.
Nitzken was pronounced dead at the scene.
“As police officers, we have a difficult job. It requires us to make difficult decisions in difficult circumstances, but this is not an acceptable performance for us,” Humphrey, the police chief, told reporters at a press conference announcing his plans to fire Stotts.
“I feel for the family of Martin Nitzken. They’re dealing with an unbelievable loss,” Humphrey said.
Stotts joined the department in 2024 and had no prior incidents.
Nitzken’s girlfriend had called police around 9:30 p.m. and said he had punched her in the face and ripped chunks of friends hair out, prompting the girls to run away to a neighbor’s house, WKLY reported.
She also told the dispatcher that he has bipolar disorder, but had never shown any signs of violence before.
Nitzken left the house, stripped his clothes, ripped a shutter from a house and chased a moving car. He also fought a neighbor who had tried to calm him down, and Nitzken dislocated his shoulder, according to police.
A neighbor told the dispatcher that Nitzken was “definitely having a mental break.”
The chief said a mental health professional was not on the scene because it had been called in as an assault.
Once an internal investigation on the incident is completed, the department’s findings will be submitted to the Commonwealth Attorney for review of whether criminal charges will be filed.
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