NICHOLASVILLE, Ky. (LEX 18) — Ten months after Nicholasville Police shot and killed Desman LaDuke after a standoff, a grand jury has chosen not to indict any officers. His family told LEX 18 they were bracing for the decision and the news was difficult for them to hear.
Melissa Marks was Desman LaDuke's aunt. She raised him. It's been a tough ten months since that day in October 2022. She said LaDuke was having a mental health crisis when they called police for help. After a two-hour standoff, police shot and killed LaDuke. They said he had raised two guns toward officers.
"It's just been really hard. It's changed everybody. It's changed everybody's life. It's changed relationships. It's changed everything," Marks said.
Marks said she's not convinced LaDuke aimed his gun at anyone.
A Jessamine County grand jury chose not to indict any officers today. She said they had suspected this might be the outcome, but that expectation doesn't make the reality any easier.
"You try to be as prepared as you can be for things like that. Of course, everybody's tried to prepare us. This is historically the way things happen. Even though you try to be prepared as you can be, just to know that nobody is going to be held responsible for killing somebody that was suicidal, that's honestly, that's a hard hit," Marks said.
Marks said she wants to try to prevent anyone else from going through this. She hopes to be able to see evidence that may have been used in the shooting investigation.
"We need to see. We need to know, the public needs to know, everybody needs to know exactly what happened and how things led to this so that things like this don't continue to happen," she said.
She hopes some kind of change can come from what happened.
"I'm hoping that at least some kind of reform toward mental health crises can be addressed in a different way in the future, that hopefully nobody else has to be scared to call for help when they're in some kind of crisis because of this, and there's a new approach, new guidelines, anything that somebody could set in place that has to be followed for everyone," she said.
The family has filed a wrongful death lawsuit that Marks said is still working through the courts.
