An Overgrown Lawn Leads to Deadly Police Standoff

Texas workers tasked with enforcing city code showed up at an Austin home Wednesday morning to carry out their latest directive: cut a Travis County residence's overgrown lawn, which had drawn multiple complaints. Instead, they were greeted with gunfire, which was returned by police who ended up fatally gunning down the apparent homeowner, per the Austin American-Statesman. The paper reports that things started becoming contentious between the city of Austin and a man IDed as Robert B. Richart over the summer, when on Aug. 12, the city informed Richart the weeds and grass in his front lawn were more than a foot high and therefore violated city code.

The officials gave Richart, who police say was in his 50s, a week to take care of it, but a satisfactory cleanup never happened. Warrant in hand, enforcers of the city code and Austin PD personnel then showed up early Wednesday to mow the lawn themselves, and that's when the APD says they "took fire" from someone inside the home, per KVUE. Those in the vicinity scattered, and police called in the SWAT team. The suspect continued to shoot at police, until a fire that had started and engulfed the home drove him to exit out the garage door, holding weapons, per Joe Chacon, Austin's police chief.

The SWAT officer who opened fire on the man is an eight-year veteran of Austin's force, according to Chacon. Cops and emergency responders began life-saving measures on the man, but it wasn't enough—he was whisked away to the hospital and later died there, per Chacon. A code inspector suffered a minor shoulder injury while trying to flee for cover during the incident, per Austin officials.

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Police say the man was the only person inside the home, which had received two previous complaints in 2020 and three in 2021; there'd been a lawn-mowing stint done there by the Austin Code Department in March, without incident. Meanwhile, the officer who shot the homeowner has been placed on administrative leave while both internal and criminal probes are ongoing. "It's sad that it's somebody who was just in a really bad mental state, you know, where this whole thing could escalate like this," a neighbor tells CBS Austin. (More police shooting stories.)