Asheville police shoot armed man at Westmont Commons apartments

Asheville police shot an armed man at Westmont Commons apartments after multiple 911 reports of a man with a knife drew officers to Chamberlain Drive around 6:17 p.m. Sunday, June 7. Police said the encounter escalated quickly: officers found the suspect on a third-floor balcony, where he allegedly threw a chair and other items off the building before coming down the stairs with a knife in hand.

Officers told the man to drop the knife, according to police, but he then sprinted toward them. Officers fired, then rendered aid at the scene until emergency medical personnel arrived. The man was taken to Mission Hospital and was reported in critical but stable condition. No officers were injured.

The North Carolina State Bureau of Investigation is now handling the shooting, which will put the sequence of events, the officers’ decisions, and the suspect’s actions under outside review. For Asheville residents, the central unanswered questions are straightforward: what officers saw on the balcony, how much time passed between the order to drop the knife and the use of force, and what happened in the final moments before the shooting.

Westmont Commons sits in Asheville on Chamberlain Drive, a busy residential complex where a police response can ripple through surrounding apartments within minutes. The city says most Asheville Police Department incident and crash reports from January 1, 2003, to the present are available through its records tools and Police-to-Citizen system, creating a public paper trail that can help establish whether the complex has drawn prior calls or complaints.

Asheville police also direct the public to the department’s non-emergency line at 828-252-1110 and to anonymous TIP2APD reporting tools for anyone with information. With the suspect hospitalized and the SBI now in charge, the next phase will be about accountability, documentation, and whether the force used that evening matches what investigators find on the ground.