Spokane Police say they negotiated repeatedly with Stephen Corkery before he was shot

The Spokane Police Department clarified Monday that officers repeatedly negotiated with a robbery suspect while he was just inside the doorway of a home in northwest Spokane. The suspect, Steven Corkery, was shot and killed by police last Wednesday after he came out of the door with a gun in hand and didn’t comply with officers’ orders to drop the weapon, according to department spokeswoman Monique Cotton. “SPD would like to clarify initial statements made just after the incident regarding timeline of events,” Cotton said in a news release. At that time, Spokane Police Chief Frank Straub said officers “were talking to him in the house, we continued to talk to him when he came out of the house.” A cellphone video from a bystander shows that Corkery was shot seconds after he left the house. Cotton said in the news release that officers negotiated with Corkery using the PA system on their police cars, giving repeated verbal commands “while the suspect was inside the home, visible through the doorway and in close proximity to the officers.” Said the release, “Through the course of an investigation, as new information is made available and additional witnesses are interviewed, it is the commitment of SPD to clarify information originally presented, if and when a clarification is necessary.”