After trooper shoots suspect, meth lab found by police

By David Tyler

Wilson Drive is a street made up mostly of tidy Cape Cod style homes that winds its way from Manlius Center Road to N. Burdick Street.
On Tuesday afternoon, the peace of the neighborhood was disrupted by a domestic dispute between a brother and sister that ended when Kenneth J. Bennett, 61, of 140 Wilson Drive, was shot in the abdomen by Trooper Gary M. Novotny. Bennett was later pronounced dead at Upstate University Hospital.
Just before 3 p.m. on May 26, Bennett’s niece called 911 and reported that her uncle was threatening and assaulting her mother with a baseball bat. On that call, the niece reported that her mother had been pushed down and injured.
At one point on the call, Bennett “commandeered the phone” from his niece and told the dispatcher that police would need to “shoot him in the head” to take him into custody, according to State Police Captain Jeffrey D. Raub, zone commander, who spoke with reporters on Wednesday.
For about an hour after law enforcement arrived, Bennett walked back and forth between the house and street brandishing first a baseball bat, and then what officers believed to be a rifle.
During the standoff, he repeatedly leveled the rifle at law enforcement officers as they pleaded with him to put the weapon down. Twice, town of Manlius police fired a non-lethal 40-millimeter foam round at Bennett, “and that did not prevent Mr. Bennett from coming after the law enforcement that was there,” Raub said.
“The weapon that he was displaying and threatening the law enforcement team with ultimately turned out to be a Daisy lever action (BB) rifle,” Raab said. “But he was approaching law enforcement that could not retreat any farther.”
“The trooper took justifiable, deadly physical force against the suspect,” Raub said.
On the 911 call, Bennett’s niece reported that her uncle was under the influence of drugs. Toxicology reports have not come back and Raub wouldn’t speculate whether Bennett was intoxicated at the time of the incident, but he did say that when law enforcement executed a search warrant on the home early Wednesday morning, they found “a full-blown clandestine methamphetamine lab in his apartment.”
The home at 140 Wilson Drive is split up into two apartments. Bennett lived in the upstairs apartment and his sister and her daughter live in the lower unit.
Onondaga County District Attorney William Fitzpatrick said it is standard operating procedure for any fatal shooting involving a law enforcement officer to be presented to a grand jury for the determination of exoneration or an indictment.
“Grand juries are not empaneled right now because of COVID,” Fitzpatrick said. “I am not going to wait if this turns into a lengthy process, say months. I prefer 23 citizens to make the decision, but it’s also not fair to Trooper Novotny to have this hanging over his head.”
Fitzpatrick also reported that Bennett had a “minor” criminal history that involved a previous theft and a misdemeanor DUI charge.
In addition to the State Troopers and the Town of Manlius Police, officers from the Onondaga County Sheriff’s Department and the DeWitt Police were also dispatched to the scene.