If you or someone you know is experiencing domestic violence and would like to talk with an advocate, call 866-834-4357, TRS 800-787-3224. This free, confidential service is available 24/7 and is accessible from anywhere in Maine.
A state trooper who shot a Milford man accused of beating his girlfriend with a hammer earlier this year was justified in using deadly force.
That’s the conclusion of investigators with the Maine attorney general’s office, which released a report detailing their findings late last week.
On the morning of May 26, a woman called police to report that 46-year-old Djvan Carter had struck his girlfriend on the head with a hammer and that he was suicidal, investigators said in their narrative of the shooting.
Troopers and Penobscot County sheriff’s deputies began their search for Carter and his girlfriend’s vehicle.
Cpl. Blaine Silk and another state trooper found the girlfriend’s vehicle backed up against a gate on Indian Nations Road in Alton.
Silk and the other trooper took cover behind a police cruiser with their pistols drawn. (Carter had served 17 years in prison for shooting a police officer in North Carolina, according to the attorney general’s office report.) They ordered both occupants out of the vehicle, but neither exited.
The troopers then saw what they believed was someone striking another person, the investigators wrote.
As the troopers approached the vehicle, Carter accelerated backward, striking the gate, and then sped toward the officers.
Silk feared Carter would “run him over” or kill his girlfriend, so he fired several shots at Carter, who then drove into a ditch. Carter then lunged at his girlfriend, and Silk fired again, according to the attorney general’s office.
The girlfriend, who wasn’t identified in the report, then emerged from the vehicle covered in blood.
Both Carter and his girlfriend were taken to Northern Light Eastern Maine Medical Center in Bangor. Carter was treated for a gunshot wound to the chest.
Carter was charged with aggravated attempted murder, elevated aggravated assault, kidnapping, aggravated assault and terrorizing with a dangerous weapon, a state police spokesperson said at the time.
Carter had been on probation for domestic violence assault after receiving a suspended sentence three weeks earlier. That was related to an assault in Brewer in March 2022.
After being released from the hospital, Carter was taken to the Penobscot County Jail in Bangor, where he remained on Wednesday, according to the jail’s website.
Investigators concluded that Silk “reasonably believed” Carter posed an imminent threat to himself and the girlfriend if he was allowed to leave the area.
“All the facts and circumstances point to the conclusion that Corporal Silk acted in self-defense and in defense of the girlfriend when he shot at Mr. Carter,” investigators concluded in their report.
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