LEXINGTON, Ky. (LEX 18) — The mother of a man accused of shooting and injuring a Lexington police officer during a standoff is searching for answers 15 months after police killed him.
Margaret Hagans says she knows very little of her son, Joshua Hagans' death on September 7, 2022, other than what was reported by the media.
She says 40-year-old Joshua Hagans was staying at the Extended Stay Hotel on Tates Creek Road when police say they responded to a trespassing and delayed assault report.
After failing to make contact with Hagans, police say he shot one of their officers, and they returned fire, killing him. The coroner's report said he had multiple gunshot wounds.
Kentucky State Police's Critical Incident Response Team said they were investigating the shooting. Lexington police's Public Integrity Unit also said they would review the incident internally.
Margaret Hagans' Account
These are the events of the night, September 7, as she remembers it.
At 8:00 a.m., Joshua Hagans appeared in court for an arraignment for a sexual assault case against a minor.
At 4:00 p.m., he called his mom to bring him food at the Tate Creek Extended Stay where he lived, which she did.
Thirty minutes later, he called her to tell her he hit someone. She came to check on him.
At 9:30, she called again to check in. They talked. Less than an hour later, police say he shot an officer. That started an hours-long standoff before he was shot and killed.
Beyond that, she's in the dark.
"For him to be dead, I have to know what happened in that room," said Hagans.
From our research, that timeline is consistent with other shootings involving the police: Investigations done by Kentucky State Police's Critical Incident Response Team.
They then send their findings to a prosecutor who can officially charge or close the case.
But even as his criminal history is shared in news articles worldwide, his mother says there is so much more to the story.
"Joshua was not a villain," said Hagans.
Hagans says he was a father and a musician who played baseball, wrote plays, and had goals, but he also struggled with severe mental illness.
A History of Schizophrenia
"He was about twenty when they diagnosed him, so he was working through that. He was on medication, and then he stopped taking it, and when this incident happened, he was off the medication."
Court records show a judge ordered him committed in June of 2022. Hagans says her son was released the same day.
"I think the resources for them are terrible because he should have been admitted, and he wasn't," she said. "I think they just put a Band-Aid on 'em and send 'em back out."
Now, waiting for answers, she's also trying to deal with the reality that what's done is done, and what could've been can never be.
"I understand that he shot a policeman, and we're sorry about that, but he shouldn't be dead. He shouldn't be dead," said Hagans.
She says he should be behind bars serving time.
According to a 2021 report by Stanford's Institute for Economic Policy Research, American prisons house a disproportionate number of mentally ill inmates, making them some of the country's largest providers of mental health care. Researchers found within two years of losing access to health care, those with a history of mental illness are more likely to be incarcerated.
Was a mental health provider on the scene? Police have yet to specify if that was the case. Would more resources have made a difference? She thinks so.
"It's important to us because we're suffering because we don't know," said Hagans.
Officer-Involved Shootings in Lexington
The incident was the second reported incident of a Lexington police officer shooting someone in two weeks. On September 1, police shot a man who allegedly pointed a gun at them on Jennifer Road. That man survived.
In March, police said officers shot and killed an armed man who was allegedly suicidal and shot at them.
In February, an officer was shot in the vest and then returned fire at a juvenile, but nobody was struck.
There were non-fatal Lexington police shootings in 2019, 2020, and 2021, according to police records obtained by LEX 18.
