Man with AR-15 killed by police was Dover High School football all-star, loved by neighbors

Dover’s Isaiah Green is brought down by a Red Land defender in 2012. Green was killed by police early Thursday morning after he allegedly approached an officer while carrying an AR-15 rifle. (Photo: Chris Dunn, York Daily Record)

Isaiah Christian Green was the kind of guy who would do anything for anybody, his neighbors said.

When it snowed, he was outside shoveling the driveway for his mother. And, if a neighbor needed help with something, he was there.

Early Thursday morning, Green was shot and killed by police inside his home after he approached an officer with an AR-15 rifle.  

Northern York County Regional Police had responded to his home in the 3800 block of Kings Lane around 1:48 a.m. for a report of an unknown problem.

The officer who shot him is on administrative leave.

Neighbors say they are in shock that this happened in their quiet Dover Township neighborhood, but also that it happened to someone like Green.

“I can’t right now conceive of Isaiah being deserving of being killed by the police if somebody can deserve that,” next-door neighbor Donna Stewart said.

He wasn’t into drugs, she said. She never saw him smoking or drinking.

He was an outdoorsman, who loved dirt-biking and hunting. He would go on big hunting trips to Utah or the Dakotas, neighbor Josh Leese said.

“He just wanted to have fun,” he said.

Green was a standout fullback and middle linebacker for Dover High School from 2011 to 2013. He rushed for 1,190 yards in 2013 and led the team in tackles with 93, according to GameTimePA records. He was named a two-time GameTimePA all-star following his sophomore (2012) and junior (2013) years.

“I thought he had a wonderful personality,” Bill Miller, Green’s coach during his sophomore year, said. “He was a very coachable player. He really seemed to enjoy (football), to have a lot of fun with it. But he was a really nice kid, really respectful and very coachable.”

Green, 5-foot-10 and 200 pounds as a senior, was a “phenomenal athlete for his size.”

“He was the kind of player that he was going to be a strong, capable player, regardless of what he did in the off season,” Miller said. “He was a freak like that.”

A search of online Pennsylvania court records showed Green had one prior contact with police. On Dec. 13, 2015, Green, who was then 19, was cited by Northern York County Regional Police Department for drinking alcohol underage. 

Green recently graduated from a welding school out-of-state, neighbors said. He was physically fit, courteous, sociable and hard working, Stewart said.

“That boy was a human being,” Stewart said. “He was not a gangster. He was a beautiful, handsome boy (his mother) gave birth to 21 years ago who respected his neighbors and he should be alive.”

A GoFundMe page set up for Green’s family raised more than $1,400 in three hours.

This story comes to us through a partnership between WITF and The York Daily Record.