According to the preliminary investigation, Scott McAllister, 39, was fatally shot by a member of the Monmouth County Emergency Response Team at approximately 4:30 a.m. inside his rented house at 33 Bayside Parkway in the Ideal Beach section of Middletown Township. The events leading to the shooting started at about 11:30 p.m. last night when the Middletown Township Police Department responded to a 911 call reporting a domestic dispute at the house. When police arrived, the mother of the child had fled from the house. She reported that McAllister was intoxicated and had beaten her. She said that he was armed with a knife and was threatening to harm their child. McAllister was locked inside the house with the couple’s 13-month-old son and refused to allow the police to enter. The Monmouth County Emergency Response Team was deployed to the scene, and a hostage negotiator attempted through the night to get McAllister to surrender peacefully to police and turn over the child. At approximately 4:30 a.m., the SWAT team forced entry into the house, where they encountered McAllister, who is believed to have been armed with a knife. One member of the team fired at McAllister, fatally wounding him. The child, who was near McAllister, was not harmed. McAllister was pronounced dead at the scene by Monmouth County Emergency Services.

No further details of the shooting are being released at this time because of the ongoing investigation.

The shooting remains under investigation by the Attorney General’s Shooting Response Team. Under an Attorney General Directive, the Shooting Response Team, made up of deputy attorneys general, detectives of the Division of Criminal Justice, and detectives of the State Police Major Crime Unit, are dispatched to the scene to handle investigations of shootings involving state troopers or officers employed by county prosecutors as detectives/investigators or members of county emergency response teams and task forces.

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