SWAT officer cleared in fatal shooting of Grammy-winner Mark Capps

A Nashville SWAT officer was cleared of any wrongdoing in the fatal shooting of a Grammy-winning sound engineer wanted for assaulting and kidnapping his wife and step-daughter.

Nashville District Attorney Glenn Funk declined to pursue charges against Officer Kendall Coon on Wednesday for the Jan 5. shooting of sound mixer Mark Capps, 54, a four-time Grammy winner for his polka music work.

Coon was one of three SWAT officers who arrived at Capps’ Hermitage, Tennessee, home after police received a call that he was holding his family at gunpoint.

The musician had a pistol in his pajamas when the cops came knocking.

Funk said the use of fatal force was “reasonably necessary,” as he also called on the state’s Bureau of Investigation to conclude its own independent review of the case, The Tennessean reported.

Hours before the shooting, Capps allegedly woke up his wife, 60, and stepdaughter, 23, while armed with a pistol, and the two women escaped with their pets after he fell asleep, according to their testimony.

“He threatened them, said if they called anyone he’d kill them,” Metro Nashville Police Department spokesperson Don Aaron after the Jan. 5 shooting.

“He was throwing things about the residence and threatened them with a gun.”

A tense 30-second clip of body-cam footage from Coon, a 14-year veteran of the force, shows the group of officers arriving at Capps’ home, with the gunman walking up to the glass door in his pajamas.

Coon and the other officers could be heard yelling at Capp to put his hands up before quickly firing through the door, killing the sound engineer.

“Officer Coon deemed that Capps’ movements posed an immediate, imminent threat and fired,” Aaron explained in a video of the footage released by police.

Criminal justice advocates had questioned why police decided to engage with Capps at the home rather than by loudspeaker to give him the chance to surrender, or why the city’s mobile crisis team was not involved in responding to the case with police.

The shooting automatically triggered an investigation, but Coon was ultimately found to have acted within reason when confronting the gunman.

Capps was best known for his work as a sound engineer for Jimmy Sturr & His Orchestra, with his mixing winning best polka album of the year from 2006 to 2009.

He was also the son of Musicians Hall of Fame member Jimmy Capps, a beloved Opry guitarist who died in 2020.