According to the police officer, who at the time was off duty and not in uniform, the 18-year-old teenager saw him coming and began running away. Then, the teenager approached the officer and fired 3 rounds at the officer. The officer then returned 17 rounds, hitting and killing the black 18-year-old. An investigation is being conducted, and according to the family of the 18-year old, he was not armed.
Hopefully, the police investigation will get to the bottom of what really happened in Missouri on Thursday morning, a little over a month of another police shooting in Ferguson MO., when another 18-year-old was shot and killed as he ran away from another police officer.
St. Louis Police Chief Col. Sam Dotson said the 32-year-old officer was patrolling the Shaw neighborhood for a private security company late Wednesday when the shooting happened.
The officer said three men in the street ran away when they spotted him, Dotson told reporters at a news conference early Thursday. The way that one of the men ran — grabbing at his waistband, slightly lopsided — indicated that he was carrying a weapon, so the officer chased him, Dotson said.
The man approached the officer in an aggressive way, an altercation ensued and the man fired at the officer, the police chief said. The officer returned fire and killed him.
Ballistic evidence recovered from the scene indicates that the man fired three rounds at the officer before his weapon jammed, Dotson said, adding that the gun was also recovered.
The officer fired 17 shots, Dotson said. He said he didn’t know how many of those shots hit the suspect or why the officer fired that many shots. The officer was not injured.
“An investigation will decide if the officer’s behavior was appropriate,” he said at police headquarters.
People who described themselves as relatives of the dead man told The St. Louis Post Dispatch that he was not armed.
Dotson described the officer as a six-year veteran of the St. Louis Police Department, and said the man who was killed was 18 years old and black.
He did not name either man.
