Winthrop Police Sgt. Nicholas Bettano, who shot and killed a committed racist who killed two black bystanders during a rampage in 2021, has been cleared of any wrongdoing.
“Our investigation makes clear that the officer’s actions were justified that tragic day,” Suffolk District Attorney Kevin Hayden said in a statement released with the investigation’s findings on Tuesday.
“Indeed, it is likely that this officer’s brave actions saved others from being injured or killed as a result of Nathan Allen’s racially motivated rampage,” the DA added. “This was a terrifying incident for Winthrop, rooted in Nathan Allen’s deep White Supremacist hatred.”
Allen, 28, had written in his journal, in an entry decorated with a Swastika and featuring many racial epithets, at an unknown date that he had determined that “Racism is good. Natural. Killing (expletive) is in our blood. We need to do this while we are apex predators.”
Come the afternoon of June 26, 2021, he seemed ready to make his dreams for some kind of race war a reality. This is how that day unfolded according to the investigative documents released with the report:
A mother would see Allen, barefoot and “acting strangely,” walk through Winthrop’s Belle Isle Cemetery on his way to the Rapid Flow truck lot on Argyle Street.
There, he would steal one of the plumbing company’s box trucks, ram in through the gate, speed through the city at around 60 mph and slam it into a GMC Terrain SUV. The Terrain was pushed into a fence in the first block of Cross Street as Allen lost control of the stolen truck and crashed into a small building on Shirley Street.
The report says Allen would step out of the destroyed box truck with blood streaking his white t-shirt and armed with two Smith & Wesson pistols: a 9mm in hand and a .45 at the ready in his waistband.
The first 911 call came in at 2:41 p.m., with a woman reporting that “A truck went into a house.” at the corner of Shirley and Cross streets. Maybe 30 seconds later another caller offered a new, horrific detail: “Oh my God! There’s somebody shooting somebody!”
Allen first saw Ramona Cooper, an Air Force veteran, walking down Shirley Street. He raised his 9mm and shot her several times at point-blank range, killing her. He then walked down an alley and found retired State Police Trooper David Green and emptied the rest of the 9mm’s magazine into the man, killing him. He then tossed the empty weapon used to kill both black bystanders.
Of the Winthrop Police personnel rushing to the scene, Sgt. Nicholas Bettano would be the first to arrive and saw the hellish image of the obliterated house and the remains of the box truck, and Cooper lying still on the road, details narrated by police radio transmissions blasting in his cruiser.
Allen advanced on Bettano with the .45 drawn as the officer secured two additional bystanders before confronting the shooter with orders to put down his weapon. Allen didn’t comply, and Bettano drew his own service pistol, a .40 caliber Glock 22, and shot Allen four times. Allen would be transported to Massachusetts General Hospital, where he died.
