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Wednesday's lead editorial.

High Point police Officer Josh Clowdis walked into a hornet’s nest on March 26.

He answered a domestic disturbance call and found a bloody battle under way between Lori Ann Hopper, armed with a box cutter, and her husband, Douglas Lee Hopper Sr. Few scenarios can be more dangerous and difficult.

The encounter ended with Clowdis shooting and killing Lori Hopper, 38, and subduing Douglas Hopper, 37, with pepper spray.

Following normal procedures, High Point police asked the SBI to investigate. The state agency reported its findings to Guilford County District Attorney Doug Henderson, who concluded last month that Clowdis acted properly. The action “unfolded so quickly it’s hard to see what the officer could have done differently,” Henderson said Monday.
High Point police Chief Jim Fealy, whose department conducted its own investigation, said Clowdis had no choice. Lori Hopper was attacking her husband, stabbing him at least once after Clowdis arrived and ignoring the officer’s order to stop.
“There’s no doubt in my mind (Douglas Hopper) was in grave danger,” Fealy said Tuesday. “I’m sorry that someone lost her life, but that was not the officer’s decision.”

Douglas Hopper disagrees.

“That is not true,” he said Monday. “Everything that they’re saying is nothing but a lie.”
Hopper declined to give his account of the incident on the advice of his attorney, he said.
Fealy remembers a different statement by Hopper that night at High Point Regional Health System, where Hopper was treated for stab wounds.

“He told me he couldn’t recall the incident. He couldn’t recall what happened,” Fealy said.
Memories of the Hoppers’ violent, two-year marriage haunt Lori Hopper’s mother, Rose Anne Strickland of Thomasville. She believes Lori might have been trying to protect herself, citing the autopsy report that said her daughter had contusions on her head, chest and upper extremities.
“Maybe she took as much as she could take and couldn’t take no more and it all came out,” Strickland said.

While expressing confidence the confrontation was handled correctly, Fealy said police haven’t put it behind them but will stage a re-enactment for training purposes. “We want to learn all we can and tweak what we do,” he said.

Every law-enforcement agency should follow similar procedures in cases like this: internal and independent external investigations, as well as training exercises, to review what happened and what might have happened differently.

An officer’s split-second reaction under life-and-death pressure can be seen as the only recourse at the time. Examined in slow motion, other options might reveal themselves. The key to constantly improving police work is to never stop looking for the perfect response the next time an officer walks into a hornet’s nest.