Police Brutality / Individual record
La'vante Trevon Biggs
The Washington Post's Fatal Force database records La'vante Trevon Biggs in a fatal on-duty police shooting on 2015-09-05 in Durham, NC. Individual circumstances and legal outcome require case-specific review.
- Record ID
- PB-257
- Incident date
- September 5, 2015
- Outcome
- Fatal
- Location
- Durham, NC
- Agency
- Durham Police Department
- Category
- Fatal on-duty police shooting
- Age (reported)
- 21
What happened
La'vante Trevon Biggs, 21, was killed by Durham police on September 5, 2015, after officers responded to reports that he was suicidal and carrying a gun outside a home on Angier Avenue. Negotiators tried to speak with him for more than half an hour. When officers said he approached them in a threatening manner, four officers fired. Investigators later determined that Biggs held an Airsoft replica rather than a conventional firearm. His mother challenged the police account of what she had told dispatchers about the gun, and questioned whether more could have been done to reach him during the crisis. The discovery that the weapon was a replica and the family's objections are central to evaluating the fatal response.
Investigation & findings
Individual legal and investigative outcome not yet reviewed.
Washington Post Fatal Force v2; 2015–2024
Source record details
- Source incident ID
- 805
- Race code in source
- B
- Race source method
- not_available
- Gender (source)
- male
- Armed status (source)
- replica
- Flee status (source)
- not
- Agency IDs (source)
- 769
Sources & records
- Primary source
- Additional source
- Methodology and national police killings trackingMapping Police Violence · Dataset/methodology
- Fatal Force v2 — fatal on-duty police shootings, 2015–2024The Washington Post · Dataset