Frustration and calls for accountability continued to build in Madison, Wisconsin, as officials publicly identified the man killed in this week’s fatal police shooting during a Thursday news conference that quickly turned contentious.
Corey Ruiz, a man in his 30s and a familiar figure in the community, died Wednesday after being shot by an officer following a struggle in which police say he pulled out a knife. Police Chief John Patterson, who described the case as an open and active homicide investigation, was interrupted for roughly 20 minutes during the briefing by two protesters, one of whom took the microphone to denounce police brutality and demand the responsible officer be jailed.
The Wisconsin Department of Justice’s Division of Criminal Investigation is leading the inquiry and will eventually release the name of the officer who fired, Patterson said. Madison Mayor Satya Rhodes-Conway also pressed for answers, saying Thursday that no one should lose their life in an encounter with law enforcement regardless of who they are or what their history includes, and promised a rigorous investigation.
Public records show Ruiz had accumulated roughly 40 misdemeanor and felony convictions between 2009 and 2025, spanning charges including armed robbery, strangulation, drug possession, vehicle theft and battery against a public safety worker; his most recent convictions involved resisting law enforcement and possession of drug paraphernalia.
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Community organizer Jazzman Brown, who said she’d known Ruiz for more than two decades through mutual friends and family ties, described him as a father who had been struggling with homelessness and mental health issues.
She remembered him as warm and full of energy, someone who lit up any room he entered, and said his death has devastated his children, mother and everyone who loved him. Brown organized a vigil Thursday night in his memory and said his death shouldn’t be reduced to a case number, calling for meaningful change so similar incidents stop happening. Attempts to reach Ruiz’s family Thursday were unsuccessful.
According to police, officers were initially called to Madison’s Marquette neighborhood Wednesday afternoon following reports of someone stealing bicycles and checking car doors. When officers found Ruiz, he fled on a bicycle through backyards before being located again near the intersection of South Baldwin and Williamson streets.
He either fell or was pulled from the bike, and a struggle with officers broke out in the intersection, during which police say Ruiz produced a fixed-blade knife and injured one of the officers. A stun gun was deployed but failed to subdue him, and the injured officer then opened fire.
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None of the four officers present were wearing body cameras. Bystander video that circulated widely online and was verified by NBC News appears to show officers restraining Ruiz as onlookers can be heard shouting warnings about the knife and calling for a taser; roughly three seconds after that, an officer standing over Ruiz appears to fire three shots, after which Ruiz stops moving.
Of the four officers involved, only one, described as a veteran officer whose identity has not yet been released, fired his weapon.
All four have been placed on administrative leave while the state’s independent investigation proceeds, as required under Wisconsin law. Police said lifesaving efforts were attempted at the scene, but Ruiz was later pronounced dead at the hospital.
Aeiramique Glass, the city’s interim independent police monitor, said her office is conducting its own review but has received limited cooperation from the department so far. She recalled rushing to the scene Wednesday and comforting distraught witnesses, describing what she saw in the video as a man shot in the head while lying on the ground after already being tased. She said Ruiz’s death appeared preventable and that better alternatives clearly existed.
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The shooting, arriving roughly six years after George Floyd’s death sparked a broader national reckoning over policing, has reignited protests in Madison. It also occurred in an area with its own troubled history: the location sits about a block and a half from where Madison police killed Tony Robinson in 2015, and near where officers killed Paul Heenan in 2012, according to the police chief.
Hundreds of people gathered at the scene Thursday evening for a moment of silence followed by chants of Ruiz’s name, later raising their arms together as “We Are the World” played.
City Council President Sabrina Madison urged residents to push local and state officials for accountability, questioning why shooting someone in the head three times would ever be treated as an acceptable option and calling for a broader push to change department policy if that turns out to have been sanctioned procedure.
