SWAT officer cleared in fatal shooting of Grammy winner Mark Capps

A Nashville SWAT officer has been cleared of wrongdoing in the fatal shooting of a Grammy-winning sound engineer wanted for assaulting and kidnapping his wife and stepdaughter.

Nashville District Attorney Glenn Funk declined to press charges against Officer Kendall Coon on Wednesday for the Jan. 5 shooting of sound mixer Mark Capps, 54, a four-time Grammy winner for his music work polka.

Coon was one of three SWAT officers who arrived at the home in Capps’ Hermitage, Tennessee, after police received a call that he was holding his family at gunpoint.

The musician had a gun in his pajamas when the cops came knocking.

Funk said the use of deadly force was “reasonably necessary” as he also called on the state Bureau of Investigation to complete its own independent review of the case, The Tennessean reported.

Hours before the shooting, Capps allegedly woke his wife, 60, and stepdaughter, 23, armed with a gun, and the two women escaped with their pets after he fell asleep, according to their testimony.

“He threatened them, said if they called anyone he would kill them,” Metro Nashville Police Department spokesman Don Aaron said after the Jan. 5 shooting.

“He was throwing things around the residence and threatening them with a gun.”

A tense 30-second clip of body camera footage of Coon, a 14-year-old force veteran, shows the group of officers arriving at Capps’ home, with the gunman walking to the glass door in his pajamas.

Coon and the other officers could be heard yelling at Capp to put his hands up before quickly firing through the door, killing the sound engineer.

“Officer Coon felt that Capps’ movements posed an immediate and imminent threat and fired,” Aaron said in a video of the footage released by police.

Criminal justice advocates had questioned why police decided to engage with Capps at home rather than over loudspeaker to give him the opportunity to turn himself in, or why the city’s mobile crisis team didn’t was not involved in responding to the case with the police.

The shooting automatically sparked an investigation, but it was ultimately found that Coon acted reasonably when dealing with the shooter.

Capps was best known for his work as sound engineer for Jimmy Sturr & His Orchestra, with his mix winning Polka Album of the Year from 2006 to 2009.

He was also the son of Musicians Hall of Famer Jimmy Capps, a beloved Opry guitarist who died in 2020.