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Patrick Chin

Age : 43

Gender : Male

Race : Asian

Date : 09/28/2021

Location : 10 Piedmont Path

City : Hillsborough

County : Somerset

State : New Jersey

Agency : Hillsborough Township Police

Officer(s) :George Kokinakous; Robert Feriello; Thomas Gurba; Kyle Edmonds; Dylan Ely

Cause of Death : Gunshot

Event : Killed by police during welfare check and mental health crisis

OPEN RECORDS SUMMARY :

On 09/28/2021, Hillsborough Township Police Officer George Kokinakous shot and killed 43-year-old Patrick Chin inside Chin's home at 10 Piedmont Path after five officers responded to a request for a welfare check during a mental health crisis.
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Police arrived at approximately 4:10 p.m. According to the New Jersey Attorney General's subsequent investigation, Chin was inside his home with an approximately three-foot-long sword and had self-inflicted wounds from a sharp object. Officers George Kokinakous, Robert Feriello, Thomas Gurba, Kyle Edmonds and Dylan Ely entered the encounter.
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Police alleged that officers repeatedly ordered Chin to put down the sword but that he did not do so. Feriello deployed OC spray in an attempt to disarm him, but it was ineffective. According to the official account, Chin then moved toward Kokinakous with the sword. Kokinakous fired four rounds, striking him.
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Chin was transported to Robert Wood Johnson University Hospital and pronounced dead at approximately 5:28 p.m.
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There is no body-camera footage of the shooting. Hillsborough police had not equipped its officers with body-worn cameras at the time. There also is no other video recording that captures the actual shooting. Kokinakous was carrying the microphone associated with his patrol vehicle's mobile video recorder, however, and it captured audio from the encounter. The New Jersey Attorney General later publicly released the recording.
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The absence of video is significant because the critical allegation that Chin moved toward Kokinakous with the sword immediately before the officer fired depends on the officers' and witnesses' accounts rather than a recording of the shooting itself. The Attorney General's investigation included witness interviews, forensic evidence, the mobile-video-recording material, autopsy findings and recorded interviews of the involved officers and other eyewitnesses.
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A state grand jury subsequently reviewed the shooting under New Jersey's independent investigation process for deaths involving police. On February 13, 2023, the grand jury returned a no bill, meaning it declined to indict Kokinakous. No criminal charges were filed against him.
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Chin's family questioned the killing. His mother, Ann Chin, said she believed somebody had made a mistake or an error in judgment and said she could not comprehend police entering her son's home and shooting him. She described Patrick as having recently married and being in what she considered the happiest period of his life, while saying she did not know what had been troubling him before his death.
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The family's challenge did not end with public statements. On May 31, 2023, Susan Elizabeth Chin and the Estate of Patrick Chin filed a federal civil-rights lawsuit against Hillsborough Township, Police Chief Michael MacMahon, Kokinakous, Feriello, Gurba, Edmonds and Ely. The lawsuit was filed in the U.S. District Court for the District of New Jersey under 42 U.S.C. §1983 and demanded a jury trial.
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OFFICER BACKGROUND
George Kokinakous was the officer who fired all four gunshots at Chin. Robert Feriello deployed the OC spray. Thomas Gurba, Kyle Edmonds and Dylan Ely were also present during the fatal encounter.
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The later Attorney General investigation is particularly important because the initial public information was extremely limited. The state investigation eventually established the identities of all five officers, identified Kokinakous as the shooter and Feriello as the officer who used OC spray, documented Chin's self-inflicted injuries and provided the state's fuller account of what allegedly occurred immediately before Kokinakous fired.
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The department's lack of body cameras is an important institutional issue in this case. New Jersey had enacted legislation in November 2020 requiring uniformed patrol officers to wear body cameras, but implementation depended upon state funding and rollout. Hillsborough officers still were not equipped with them when Chin was killed in September 2021. Consequently, a fatal police encounter that began as a welfare check during a mental health crisis occurred without body-camera documentation of the officers' actions or Chin's final movements.
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The civil lawsuit filed by Chin's family is also significant because it names not merely Kokinakous but all five officers present, Police Chief Michael MacMahon and Hillsborough Township itself, bringing the conduct of the officers and the municipality into federal civil-rights litigation despite the state grand jury's earlier decision not to criminally charge Kokinakous.
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The case therefore ultimately produced two very different forms of legal scrutiny: a state criminal review that ended without charges against Kokinakous and a subsequent federal civil-rights action brought by Chin's family and estate. The family's position that the encounter involved a serious error in police judgment is especially relevant because police had been summoned to Chin's own home to check on his welfare during a mental health crisis rather than to investigate a reported crime.

SOURCE LINKS :

https://www.nj.com/somerset/2021/09/man-killed-by-police-during-welfare-check-in-hillsborough.html
https://www.mycentraljersey.com/story/news/local/somerset-county/2021/09/29/hillsborough-police-shooting-patrick-chin/5907446001/
https://www.couriernews.com/story/news/local/somerset-county/2021/09/29/hillsborough-police-shooting-under-investigation/5907888001/
https://www.nj.com/somerset/2022/01/grand-jury-clears-hillsborough-police-in-fatal-shooting-of-patrick-chin.html
https://www.nj.com/somerset/2021/10/somebody-made-a-mistake-mother-in-disbelief-after-police-fatally-shoot-son.html
https://www.njoag.gov/updated-ags-office-investigating-fatal-police-involved-shooting-in-hillsborough-2021-1018/
https://www.njoag.gov/ags-office-releases-video-from-mobile-video-recorder-in-police-vehicle-related-to-fatal-police-involved-shooting-in-hillsborough-on-september-28-2021/
https://www.njoag.gov/grand-jury-declines-to-file-charges-in-police-involved-shooting-that-killed-hillsborough-man-on-september-28-2021/
https://dockets.justia.com/docket/new-jersey/njdce/3%3A2023cv02949/513023