Two New York State troopers will not face charges in the fatal shooting of a 69-year-old Orange County woman who ignored repeated commands to drop what looked like a gun, the state Attorney General's Office announced Friday. Nancy Loftus was killed in April 2025 after troopers responding to a domestic incident at a mobile home in Deerpark opened fire when she raised the weapon toward them, which was later recovered at the scene and identified as a pellet gun.
According to a press release from the New York Attorney General's Office, the Office of Special Investigation concluded that prosecutors could not disprove beyond a reasonable doubt that Troopers Kevin Jacks and James Curtin acted in self-defense. Investigators found that Loftus lowered and then raised what appeared to be a gun toward them despite repeated commands to drop it. As reported by News 12 Hudson Valley, Attorney General Letitia James said prosecutors would not be able to prove that Jacks and Curtin's use of deadly force was unjustified.
A 2:30 a.m. Call to a Rural Mobile Home
The confrontation began when troopers responded to the Deerpark mobile home at approximately 2:30 a.m. after receiving a 911 call reporting a domestic assault. As CBS News reported, they encountered a male victim on the front porch suffering from a knife laceration to his stomach; he was treated at the scene for non-life-threatening injuries. Deerpark, a rural township of roughly 7,500 residents covering 67.9 square miles near the Pennsylvania border, relies heavily on New York State Police Troop F patrols out of the Greenville barracks, according to Orange County municipal records.
Body-worn camera footage released by the Attorney General's Office in August 2025 showed Curtin and Jacks taking cover behind vehicles and repeatedly shouting at Loftus to raise her hands and drop the weapon before discharging their service firearms. The footage was made public as part of Attorney General directives requiring the release of body-camera video during Office of Special Investigation reviews to promote transparency. After troopers administered initial medical aid on scene, per the same account, Loftus was transported by emergency medical services to Bon Secours Community Hospital in nearby Port Jervis, where she was pronounced deceased.
The Troopers Involved
Trooper Kevin Jacks had served with the New York State Police since March 2016, while Trooper James Curtin had joined the force nine months earlier, in July 2024, with both assigned to Troop F in Greenville. Both troopers were placed on voluntary administrative leave following the shooting while the state investigation proceeded, the outlet's report noted.
The Legal Standard Behind the Decision
Under New York Penal Law Section 35.30, a law enforcement officer is legally authorized to use deadly physical force when the officer reasonably believes such force is necessary to defend against another person's imminent use of deadly physical force. Because the pellet gun Loftus was holding was reportedly indistinguishable from a lethal handgun in the moment, prosecutors determined they could not disprove that the troopers held an objectively reasonable belief that deadly force was necessary. Legal justification under this standard evaluates what a reasonable officer would believe given the perceived threat at the precise moment of the encounter.
The case was reviewed under New York Executive Law Section 70-b, which took effect in April 2021 and requires the Attorney General's Office of Special Investigation to assess any incident where a law enforcement officer may have caused a civilian death, regardless of whether the officer was on duty or the civilian was armed. That statute displaced local district attorney jurisdiction over fatal police encounters statewide. According to the Fifth Annual Report of the Office of Special Investigation, the agency conducts more than 200 such investigations annually into civilian deaths involving police or peace officers across New York, and it issues public investigative reports whenever it determines criminal charges are not warranted.
A Familiar Pattern in Imitation-Weapon Cases
The Loftus case echoes a separate 2026 investigation in which the Attorney General's Office similarly concluded that officers were legally justified in using deadly force against an individual who refused commands to drop a weapon later identified as a non-lethal replica, as Hoodline reported in a Bushwick case. In both instances, prosecutors weighed whether an officer's perception of imminent danger was reasonable under the totality of the circumstances, rather than what the weapon turned out to actually be.
Hoodline first covered this case in April 2025, when the Attorney General's Office opened its inquiry into Loftus's death. Friday's announcement closes that investigation, more than a year after the shooting, with no criminal charges filed against either trooper.
