(WKYT) – Kentucky State Police released a more than 1,000-page case file Friday on the officer-involved shooting death of Doug Harless.
It happened in December 2024, just two days before Christmas.
London Police say they were trying to serve an arrest warrant on Vanzant Road.
When police busted in Doug Harless’ front door, they saw him with a gun. That’s when police shot and killed Harless.
Through court records, we later found out the arrest warrant was linked to a stolen weed eater taken from a property owned by Laurel County Judge Executive David Westerfield.
Hobert Buttery was already in jail and charged with the crime at the time of Harless’ death.
Days after the shooting, WKYT obtained dispatch audio from the night of the shooting. You can hear officers repeatedly saying they were at 489 Vanzant Road, but they were actually at 511 Vanzant Road.
In the report, there are also photos of Harless’ address. KSP investigators noted they could see the address numbers under a motion-activated light.
Even after KSP released the more than a thousand-page case file, community members like former London Mayor and current mayoral candidate, Tracie Handley, say they still have unanswered questions.
“I don’t know why they had to do it at night. That’s my biggest thing. Why were you serving a warrant at almost midnight for a weed eater? And with that many people. Had it been daylight, perhaps they would’ve seen the numbers, and an innocent man would still be alive,” Handley said.
When Handley served as London Mayor, she requested a status update from KSP on Harless’ case.
“I put out that call because it had already gone on long enough in my opinion. [In] a lot of cases, when there’s an incident like this, you have an investigation, and you have things that are put out to the public in very little time, it doesn’t take a year, year and a half,” she said.
Handley also said she believes there needs to be a deeper investigation from someone not affiliated with London or the police force.
“An independent person to look into what policies and procedures might have been violated and if they found that none were, then how could the policies and procedures be rewritten, redone, restructured so that a travesty and a tragedy like this will never happen again,” Handley said.
She said she’s working behind the scenes to find someone to look deeper into the case.
We reached out to London Police and Mayor Randall Weddle for comment.