Louisville Metro Police Chief Paul Humphrey announced Tuesday he is beginning the termination process against Officer Nathan Stotts, who fatally shot 27-year-old Martin Nitzken Jr. on Saturday night near the Klondike neighborhood.
Body camera footage released at a press conference showed Nitzken was naked and unarmed when Stotts shot him once in the neck.
Stotts joined LMPD’s Sixth Division in February 2024 and had no disciplinary history before the shooting. The termination is not immediate.
Department policy requires Stotts to first receive formal notice of the chief’s intent, after which he can request a pretermination hearing to make his case. If the firing stands, he holds the right to appeal before the police merit board and, if needed, through the courts.
Witnesses and 911 callers described a chaotic scene unfolding in the 3000 block of Cromarty Way before officers even arrived. Nitzken had been at a home with his girlfriend and two of her friends watching a basketball game when he suddenly became agitated and attacked all three women.
His girlfriend, who called 911, told the dispatcher he was bipolar but had shown no previous signs of violence throughout their relationship. She described being punched in the face while one of her friends had her hair physically ripped from her head. The women escaped to a neighbor’s home to call for help.
By the time officers were dispatched, Nitzken had already stripped off his clothes, torn a shutter from a nearby house, chased a moving vehicle down the street, and gotten into a fight with a neighbor who attempted to intervene. That neighbor suffered a dislocated shoulder in the confrontation. A separate 911 caller told dispatch that Nitzken was “definitely having a mental break.”
Stotts arrived to find Nitzken sitting in the middle of the road with nothing in his hands. Footage shows the officer issuing repeated commands for Nitzken to show his hands and stay back.
Nitzken rose from the ground and began walking toward Stotts. Despite continued warnings to stop, he kept moving forward.
Stotts fired once, striking Nitzken in the neck. After the shot, the officer kept his weapon aimed at Nitzken rather than moving to help him. Backup officers eventually rendered aid, but more than three minutes had passed since the shooting. Nitzken was pronounced dead at the scene.
Humphrey did not mince words when addressing the officer’s conduct. “This was not the right action.
Our officers make tough decisions every day that do not result in this. Sometimes we have to make decisions to take people’s lives, and this was not one of them,” the chief said. He pointed specifically to Stotts making no attempt to use less lethal force before pulling the trigger.
Mayor Craig Greenberg backed the chief’s decision and confirmed the commonwealth’s attorney is now involved. Both an internal review through LMPD’s Public Integrity Unit and a criminal investigation are running in parallel.
The shooting has renewed calls for Louisville to move faster on a co-responder program that would send mental health professionals alongside officers on crisis calls.
Mayor Greenberg said the city is still working through the details, but stopped short of committing to any specific timeline for when the program would launch.
