Bucks County DA clears police officers in fatal shooting of man last month

Bucks County District Attorney Matt Weintraub announced Tuesday that three police officers were legally justified in fatally shooting a 40-year-old man who allegedly threatened them with a knife a month ago.

Mark Chambers was shot Nov. 5 outside his home on the 400 block of Elm Avenue in Northampton Township by three local officers responding to a 911 call from his mother reporting that her son was suicidal, was armed with a knife, and already had hurt himself, Weintraub said in a news release.

The officers arrived to find Chambers just inside the front doorway of his home holding a 12-inch knife, Weintraub said.

According to the officers’ body cameras, Weintraub said, they encountered Chambers 18 seconds after they arrived and then for the next 17 seconds they repeatedly ordered Chambers to drop his knife.

At some point, Chambers could be heard saying, “Help me,” and one of the officers responded, “We will help you,” Weintraub said.

But then Chambers raised the knife over his head and charged out of his house toward the officers, who then fired multiple times, Weintraub said.

Chambers was transported to St. Mary’s Medical Center in Langhorne, where he was later pronounced dead.

“Despite repeated attempts by all three officers to use less-than-lethal force in the form of verbal commands to control this situation and resolve it peacefully, Mark Chambers continued to disregard each officer’s commands to drop his knife and instead disobeyed these lawful commands issued by all three officers, thus escalating this situation into a deadly one,” Weintraub wrote in a letter to Northampton Township Police Chief Steven LeCompte clearing the officers.

“By raising his knife into an attack position from mere feet away as he charged at the officers, despite all their repeated commands for him to drop his weapon, Mark Chambers created a situation in which all three officers had no other reasonable choice but to fire their weapons in defense of themselves, and of each other, in order to neutralize the deadly and imminent threat that Chambers posed to them all,” Weintraub wrote.

Weintraub did not release the names of the officers because they had not been charged with any crime, according to his staff.

An obituary posted online said Chambers was born in Philadelphia and had graduated from Penn State University. He worked as a tax analyst, and his hobbies included fishing, camping, and rock climbing. He enjoyed playing cards and magic and gambling at casinos.

He is survived by his parents, a brother and two aunts, and his “four-legged companion Tiva.”

His obituary requested that any donations in his name be made to the Society of American Magicians and the National Alliance for Mental Illness.