Fatal Encounters record · Independent third-party dataset
Clifford Knauss
January 30, 2006 · Denville, Morris County
Details as recorded
Every value below is shown exactly as Fatal Encounters recorded it.[1]
- Name as recorded
- Clifford Knauss
- Age as recorded
- 81
- Gender as recorded
- Male
- Race as reported
- Race unspecified
- Date of the injury resulting in death
- January 30, 2006
- Location as recorded
- Denville, Morris County44 Florence Ave Denville NJ 07834 Morris
- Highest level of force as recorded
- Gunshot
Where the dataset places it
The marked point is the dataset's own geocoded location for this record, as recorded. Every other New Jersey record in the dataset is shown in gray. A point on a map is where a death was recorded, not a finding about anyone.
Agencies as recorded
Agency or agencies involved, as recorded: Denville Police Department
An agency appears here because it appears in the record's as-reported agency field, nothing more. Its presence is not a claim of fault or responsibility.
Department pages (matched by this site at high confidence)
The source's account
Fatal Encounters' description of the incident, verbatim. This is the source project's own third-party narrative, not this site's reporting.
Clifford Knauss, 81, asked his wife if she wanted to die with him, then walked into his backyard and fatally shot himself in front of eight Denville police officers with guns drawn, demanding he drop his weapon. Knauss, a retired gas station owner and mechanic, pointed the World War II-era 9mm semi-automatic pistol at his chest and pulled the trigger at about 9:48 a.m. Allegedly, he thought he was going to get caught for asking multiple insurance agencies to pay for his prescriptions.
Source reported by Fatal Encounters: https://docs.google.com/document/d/1_0epMmrz4NjttTMnow3ll9uD43wCbSce2ERecB5h48o/edit?usp=sharing (external link, as recorded in the dataset).
If you are a family member of the person named here, or represent one, and something in this record is wrong, or you want the record removed, requests go through the corrections page. Every request is checked against the source record.
This is one of 22 New Jersey records the dataset dates to 2006, and one of 14 it holds for Morris County across 2000 to 2021. Browse every New Jersey Fatal Encounters record by year.
Records from the same county and year
- Edwin A. Mulligan (2006) September 18, 2006
Questions and answers
What does the Fatal Encounters dataset record about this incident?
Fatal Encounters records that Clifford Knauss died on January 30, 2006 in Denville, Morris County, with "Gunshot" as the highest level of force. Fatal Encounters is an independent, crowdsourced dataset of deaths that occurred during police encounters of any kind; a record is not a finding of fault or misconduct.
Which agency or agencies were recorded as involved?
The record's agency field reads "Denville Police Department". Presence in that field means the agency appears in the record as reported, nothing more; it is not a claim of fault or responsibility by any officer or agency.
Where did this happen?
The record places the death in Denville, Morris County, on January 30, 2006. The address as recorded is 44 Florence Ave Denville NJ 07834 Morris.
Sources
- [1]Fatal Encounters, New Jersey subset. Fatal Encounters (fatalencounters.org). Row 25358. Derived from the public Fatal Encounters national dataset (coverage 2000-2021; collection ended December 2021), https://fatalencounters.org/. Retrieved July 10, 2026. ↩