EDITOR’S NOTE: I apologize to our readers for the headline on this story that appeared in Sunday’s paper. It was insensitive, inappropriate and failed to convey the gravity of this tragedy. We have changed the headline on our Web site to a more appropriate one. Rex Rhoades — Executive Editor

RUMFORD – A Maine state trooper shot and killed a 46-year-old Rumford man Saturday afternoon, after a nearly eight-hour standoff at his former wife’s Penobscot Street home.

Scott J. White was shot three times at close range by Trooper Tim Black when he ran – armed with knives – at 4:50 p.m. from the back of his house toward three tactical team members blocking access to a narrow band of woods.

Minutes later, he was rushed by Med-Care Ambulance to Rumford Hospital, where he was pronounced dead.

White, who has a criminal history, last month pleaded not guilty to charges of attempted murder and elevated aggravated assault stemming from an incident on June 28, where his wife, Tracey White, was stabbed three times. He had recently been released from the Oxford County Jail, where he had been held since the June incident.

According to Steven McCausland, spokesman for the Maine Department of Public Safety, White entered his ex-wife’s house, where no one was home, at midmorning. Rumford Police were called, and, believing that White was threatening to set the residence on fire, requested assistance from the state tactical team, McCausland said in a news release.

As is customary in such situations, Trooper Black, a member of the tactical team, has been placed on paid administrative leave while the state police and the state Attorney General’s Office investigates the incident, McCausland said.

After the gunfire, Devon Bradley ran out of her upstairs apartment at 99 Maine Ave. yelling to a large crowd gathered at a taped-off perimeter at Washington Street and Maine Avenue. She shouted that she’d just seen White get shot.

“It was weird. I’ve never seen anybody get shot before,” Bradley said to the crowd. “They were telling him to come out and he came out, then went back inside. Then two seconds later, he came out really fast, and they shot him.”

Bradley and her boyfriend, David Long, said police tricked White into going outside to get a cell phone they’d left on the ground for him behind the chocolate brown 2½-story house..

“I was on my back porch, and they were telling him, ‘Come out and get the phone and drop your weapons’ – he had knives,” Bradley said, visibly trembling from what she had witnessed and trying to smoke a cigarette.

“They said, ‘We’re going to back off,’ and he said, ‘It doesn’t take that long to back off,’ and then he came flying out the back door and the SWAT team surrounded him. They were point-blank and yelling, ‘Get down! Get down!’ And then they all shot at him. Pow! Pow! Pow! I’m still shaking. I never seen anybody get shot. It was real scary. I’m just glad it’s over.

“He just plopped to the ground, and they were pointing their guns at him. Then a bunch of police came running into the driveway, and I ran downstairs. I didn’t know if they were going to shoot him again,” Bradley said.

“She saw it. I just heard everything going on,” Long said. Using a megaphone, police “were saying, ‘We just want to talk to you. Get the phone. We don’t want anyone hurt. We just want to talk to you.’

“They were just trying to get him to get the phone and finally they got him to try and come out, and I heard them arguing. (White) was saying, ‘You’re not backing off. Back off,’ and one guy said he was backing up slowly, and the guys started to back up and (White) just bolted out the back door and was trying to run into the woods. I heard (White) say he had knives and I heard (police) say, ‘Put the knives down.’ Then I heard three shots. They sounded like a .45 to me …. the snipers, had big guns in the family of an M15,” Long said.

“They put the phone out there, and he came out to get it and they capped him right there. This is unreal. I heard three shots and he was down motionless,” Darren Thibodeau said standing outside 99 Maine Ave.

When White left the house to retrieve the phone, he first was tasered, according to public safety spokesman McCausland, and then was shot when he continued to approach officers.

The drama started to unfold at 9:30 a.m., according to Rachel Child, who lives in the second house south of the White’s house. She was standing with a large crowd in the Rumford Public Library parking lot, watching the event unfold up Penobscot Street, which was blocked with several police cars, a tactical team van and a large state police special services truck.

“I looked out this morning and saw a couple of cruisers pull up and then more and more, and then there were all these men dressed in camouflage in my driveway with semiautomatic weapons aimed at his house,” Child said.

“Then, I looked out again and there were Army-looking dudes by my van, and I thought it must be safe. Then there were SWAT team guys all around my van. They were using it as a fort.”

Child said police told everyone on Penoscot Street to stay inside, stay away from windows and lock their doors.

“I don’t know why they didn’t ask us to leave. When they said I could leave, I put my baby in my vehicle, and they all stood around me with their guns out,” Child said.

She said she didn’t know Scott White personally, but knows his brother.

“He seemed like a nice guy. This winter I got stuck, and he shoveled me out,” she added.

Police soon became nervous, with so many people watching from the library area and the outer edge of the Route 2 rotary and began trying to disperse them.

A large crowd gathered at Washington Street and Maine Avenue on the upper end of the situation to watch police. Oxford County Sheriff Wayne Gallant and Deputy George Cayer kept the crowd back at that end.

At about 4:30 p.m., Rumford Town Manager Jim Doar walked down Maine Avenue to where Gallant, wearing a bullet-proof vest, stood. Gallant then briefed Doar on the situation.

At about 4:45 p.m., one of three tactical team members using a blue car for cover at the intersection of Penobscot and Maine Avenue, stretched out prone on the ground and aimed his sniper rifle toward the rear of 139 Penobscot St., peering through a large scope mounted on it.

“It’s going to happen soon. They’re going in,” Cayer said to Gallant.

Five minutes later, three shots rang out, and the three tactical team members behind the blue car quickly stood up and yelled, “Rescue! Rescue! Rescue!” They motioned wildly for the Med-Care team to take the ambulance in, which they did, rushing in after Gallant moved his cruiser.