Marine Suffering Cancer, Shot and Killed Near Maine VA Hospital

James F. Popkowski, 37, a Togus patient, was shot during an armed confrontation with VA police Officer Thomas Park and Maine Warden Service Officer Joey Lefebrve and Sgt. Ron Dunham in woods off Route 17 shortly after 9 a.m., Maine State Attorney General’s Office officials said.

The office said Park and Dunham used deadly force against the man. Lefebrve was involved but did not use deadly force. All three were placed on administrative leave with pay pending the outcome of an investigation into the incident, officials said.

Preliminary evidence indicates that the officers fired at Popkowski in self defense, Attorney General Janet Mills said. Investigators said Popkowski had carried a gun, which witnesses tentatively identified as a rifle, “in a threatening manner.”

Seeing the confrontation, the game wardens aided Park.

Various witnesses said several shots were fired, possibly in response to a round being discharged. Some said they did not see Popkowski act aggressively before he was shot.

Resident Rosemary Dumas said she heard a shot fired at about 9:30 a.m. When she looked out her window, she saw a Togus guard with his gun drawn. She heard several shots a short time later. Another witness reported seeing a game warden fire three or four times after hearing another shot fired in the woods.

Popkowski’s Toyota pickup was parked about 40 to 50 feet off the road near the VA facility, said Glenwood Shaw, who lives across the street from the site of the shooting. Shaw said he had seen the pickup parked in the area before.

Popkowski practiced shooting what neighbor Rich Borque, who worked for Popkowski as a handyman, identified as .22- and .32-caliber handguns at around midnight Tuesday and Wednesday nights, Borque and other neighbors said. And in the hours before the incident, Popkowski posted a sign the size of a picnic table behind a flashing light on his Grindstone Road property.

“I can’t say what it said word for word,” Borque said of the sign, “but it said something about how the doctors were killing him by not giving him stem-cell medicine.”

Borque, who did work at Popkowski’s house on Thursday morning after Popkowski left for treatment at the VA center, said a Penobscot County deputy sheriff stopped by and looked at the large sign at about 8:30 a.m.

Several state police detectives and bomb squad members searched Popkowski’s home for several hours on Thursday, apparently taking evidence from the makeshift target range in his side yard. A large wood and wire frame, apparently where the sign was placed, remained standing.

Popkowski joined the U.S. Marine Corps in 1990. In 2003, the first lieutenant was diagnosed with a rare and aggressive cancer called hepatosplenic gamma-delta T-cell lymphoma. Neighbors said it was commonly known that Popkowski was honorably discharged due to his medical condition.

“He was sick a lot. He suffered a lot,” said Ellen Van Dine, a Grindstone Road resident who with her husband occasionally would see and dine with Popkowski. “When he got sick, he was really in pain, and it would make him tired a lot, yet he was always very considerate and kind.”

In 2008, Popkowski wrote at length about his battle against depression and suicidal thoughts in an online response to an article in New Scientist magazine about the complications of certain stem cell transplant procedures. He also indicated that he had been denied or had lost his veterans benefits.

“Suicide is like a little devil, always on my shoulder and always tempting me. Concern for the care of my three dogs after I am gone, my dogs being the only things I feel anything that resembles passion for, is the only thing I think that has kept me from pulling the trigger on the loaded pistol, which rests next to my pillow,” he wrote.

Popkowski described himself as “a rather stoic person” who before his illness was not prone to moodiness. He said he believed his severe and ongoing depression was rooted in “something or some imbalance in my nervous system created by the GVHD.” When the condition was being treated with steroids, he said, “depression was not an issue. As soon as the [steroid treatment] was stopped the depression came on like a freight train.”

Attempts to treat the depression with more than a dozen antidepressant medications were unsuccessful, Popkowski wrote.

“The best way to describe the mental and emotional issues is that I am numb … passionless. Nothing brings joy or pleasure,” he wrote. “I graduated Magna Cum Laude with [degrees] in Computer Info Systems and Business Management in just three years. Now, I cannot mentally focus long enough to read a newspaper. I find it hard to even have a brief conversation on the telephone; never mind reading or sending email.”

Popkowski said he also lacked the energy to perform routine tasks, seldom left home and often was unable to sleep.

“I have lost count on the number of sleep aids NIH and my local VA have tried. Like the anti-depressants, none have worked,” he wrote.

“One concern I have, but hope never materializes is that, a research center’s desire to label a recipient’s transplant a success, causes the center to ignore health issues that may lead to the recipient losing benefits from agencies like the Social Security Administration. Or as in my case, benefits from the Veterans Administration,” he concluded.

Popkowski also was an occasional commenter on the Bangor Daily News website. He weighed in at length about the inconsistency of expecting young adults to fight and die in wars but prohibiting them from drinking alcohol.

He advocated for the legal use of marijuana for treating certain medical conditions, including cancer and graft-versus-host disease, from which he reportedly suffered. Several comments pertained to his dogs and the care they received from a local veterinarian.

Several of Popkowski’s friends in Medway and Grindstone neighbors said that he bore his cancer’s sometimes terrific pain and often debilitating effects like an officer, bravely and without losing his regard for or desire to serve others.

Van Dine said she occasionally would see Popkowski walking his three dogs and that he always was cheerful and quick to help neighbors with any problems they might have.

“If he did not have that illness, I think he would have stayed in the military all of his life,” said Greg Hale of Medway, a friend and classmate of Popkowski’s at Schenck High School of East Millinocket. “He was a soldier, that’s all I can say. He was a military man from the day he was born.”

“He suffered terribly from cancer and he was never miserable,” Van Dine said. “The only time he would mention it, and he never really wanted to mention it, was when he apologized for not calling you back right away. He would just say, ‘I had a bad day.’”

The Associated Press and Bangor Daily News writers William P. Davis and Eryk Salvaggio contributed to this report.