[chris]

A Madison, Wisconsin, man was shot and killed by police in July 2007 after he called 911 to report an armed man outside his home. The armed man was himself, and the gun was an unloaded pellet pistol, according to police records and news accounts of the case.

Ronald A. Brandon, 48, had been drinking on the evening of July 15, 2007, when he phoned 911 and described a man waving a gun on the city's southeast side. Brandon did not tell the call-taker that he was describing himself, and he never said the weapon was a pellet gun built to look like a real handgun.

Brandon's ex-wife called police at nearly the same time. She told a dispatcher the gun was an unloaded pellet gun, but that information reached the responding officers less than two minutes before the shooting, too late to change how they read the scene.

Officer Matt Kenny and two other officers arrived to find Brandon holding the gun. According to a search warrant filed in the case, Kenny ordered him to drop it. Brandon refused and pointed the weapon at the officers. Kenny fired two rounds from his rifle and struck Brandon in the head. Brandon died outside his home.

Dane County District Attorney Brian Blanchard cleared all three officers of wrongdoing. "Officer Kenny was presented with a life and death choice that required him to match the direct threat of lethal force with lethal force," Blanchard wrote. Investigators concluded that Brandon had provoked the confrontation to have police kill him, a finding commonly called suicide by cop. Kenny received the department's Medal of Valor, its highest honor, in May 2008.

The case drew renewed attention in March 2015, after Kenny fatally shot Tony Robinson, an unarmed 19-year-old, during a call on Madison's east side. News outlets revisited the Brandon shooting as prosecutors weighed whether to charge Kenny in Robinson's death.