District Attorney Matt Weintraub ruled that the fatal officer-involved shooting of a knife-wielding man last month in Northampton Township was justified.

In a letter to Northampton Township Police Chief Steven LeCompte this week, Weintraub wrote that based upon his review of the evidence, “I have concluded that [the officers] were reasonable in their individual beliefs that their lives were placed in clear and present danger by Mr. Chambers at the time that each of the three fired their service weapons at him, killing him. l therefore conclude that [the officers] were justified in discharging their weapons and fatally shooting Mark Chambers.”

Mark Chambers, 40, was fatally shot on the night of Nov. 5, 2023, after a brief confrontation with police just outside his home in the 400 block of Elm Avenue in the Holland section of Northampton Township.

The officers had responded to the house on a report of a suicidal subject and, within seconds of their arrival, Chambers charged at them with a 12-inch knife, ignoring at least 18 verbal commands to drop the weapon.

Police officers and other first responders immediately began rendering first aid to Chambers, and he was transported to St. Mary Hospital, where he was pronounced deceased. An autopsy showed Chambers died from multiple gunshot wounds.

Whenever deadly force is used by law enforcement officers in Bucks County, it is standard procedure for the District Attorney to investigate to determine whether the use of deadly force was justified. Weintraub assigned the Bucks County Detectives to investigate immediately after the shooting occurred and relied on their findings and other evidence in reaching his conclusions.

Because none of the officers are being charged, their names are not being released, per District Attorney’s Office protocol.

At 7:30 p.m. on Nov. 5, 2023, the Bucks County Communications Center received a 911 call from a woman reporting that her son was armed with a knife, had cut his own neck, and was threatening to jump from the roof. She terminated the 911 call, but emergency dispatchers called her back, and they could hear her yelling at her son to get back inside the house. 

Within a minute of the 911 call, three officers notified dispatchers that they were heading to the home. A review of the officers’ body camera footage showed that the entire incident at the home lasted a total of 35 seconds, which included the 18 seconds from the time they exited their vehicles until their initial encounter with Chambers. 

The officers’ body-worn camera showed Chambers standing just inside the front doorway of his home and holding a knife with both hands at waist level.

In the 17-second confrontation with Chambers, the three officers gave Chambers at least 18 verbal commands to “drop the knife” or “drop it.” During this encounter, Chambers could be heard saying, “help me,” and one of the officers responded, “we will help you.”

However, without warning, Chambers positioned his knife in an overhead attack position and charged out the front door at the officers, causing them to open fire. The three officers retreated a short distance backwards and were approximately six to 10 feet away from Chambers when they discharged their firearms at him.

The evidence collected at the scene included a 12-inch knife with an 8-inch blade.

In coming to his conclusion, District Attorney Weintraub said he weighed the totality of the circumstances as reasonably perceived by the three officers at the time they fired their weapons.

“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.

Weintraub wrote that Chambers unquestionably disregarded lawful commands from [the officers] to drop his weapon, placing them in danger of death or serious bodily injury by his own actions. All three officers reasonably believed that Chambers intended to stab at least one of them when he raised his knife into an attack position and charged toward the three of them from within six to 10 feet away, he wrote in his letter to Chief LeCompte.

“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.

All three officers acted within the permissible scope of Northampton Township Police use-of-force requirements, and the use-of-force best practices guidelines adopted by all Bucks County Police Departments in November 2020, Weintraub noted.

“For the foregoing reasons, I therefore conclude that [the officers] were each legally justified in shooting Mark Chambers, which unfortunately resulted in his death,” Weintraub wrote. “Since neither of [the officers] are criminally culpable in this matter; our investigation is accordingly closed.”

Media Contact: Manuel Gamiz Jr., 215.348.6298, mgamiz@buckscounty.org