The 911 calls made earlier this month before an officer-involved shooting in Gaston County have been released.
These calls indicate that officers may have responded to an individual with a mental health issue that ended with gunfire.
While no body camera footage of this incident has been released, Gaston County Police have provided details on how the situation escalated.
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The incident began on December 7 with a tense 911 call from a home on Beau Drive in Stanley.
The caller told dispatch that her husband had stabbed himself. The caller then pleaded with the man who had hurt himself, repeatedly telling him she loved him.
The situation then escalated after the caller revealed to the dispatcher that there were children in the house.
‘Don’t do it. Don’t do it, honey. Everything is fine. Everything is fine. You have three beautiful children and we all love you,” the caller said.
Two officers arrived five minutes after the caller hung up on 911.
Gaston County police said 42-year-old Eric Edwin Bianchi was holding a machete when officers arrived. They said they gave him multiple commands to drop it, but instead he walked toward them.
At that point, officers saw this as an imminent deadly threat, and one of them fatally shot Bianchi.
“I just remember hearing gunshots. It sounded like maybe four or five,” neighbor Crystal Howard said.
Howard told Channel 9 that her backyard borders Bianchi. She said officers later told her her home was in the line of fire.
“They had to walk out to my backyard and check to make sure there were no bullet holes in the back of the house,” Howard said.
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She said she did not know the family well, but that she often heard children in the house screaming in ways that did not resemble play.
“A real, loud scream like they were getting hurt, but I didn’t know it so I couldn’t do anything about it,” Howard explained.
The officer who shot Bianchi has been with the department for nine years and is assigned to a high-risk, specialized unit that often responds to people with weapons.
Officers told Channel 9 that the officer fired their service weapon only twice. The North Carolina State Bureau of Investigation deemed both incidents justified.
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