A Fairfax County police officer fired five shots at a woman who appeared to slash his face with a knife in a Reston apartment building last month, fatally wounding her, according to newly released body-camera footage showing a roughly four-minute interaction that began when the officer was called to conduct a welfare check.
By Emily Davies
Fairfax Police Chief Kevin Davis at a news conference Monday stood by the actions of his officer, who the department identified as Peter Liu, a 14-year veteran.
“He did the things that we train him and expect him to do,” Davis said at the news conference in which authorities released the graphic footage.
The woman who was shot, Sydney Wilson, 33, was pronounced dead at a hospital. Efforts to reach her relatives were unsuccessful.
Fairfax County runs a program in which mental health counselors join police officers on calls involving people with mental illness to help avoid violence. Davis said no counselor joined the officer during the welfare check on Wilson because Liu had received training in crisis intervention.
“I do believe this call for service was appropriately dispatched,” Davis said.
The Sept. 16 shooting was the county’s first officer-involved shooting since May 2023, according to Davis. In that incident in the Alexandria section of the county, a man tried to grab an officer’s gun and then tussled with him in a moving police vehicle, according to authorities and body-cam footage.
