dont warm up your car and leave it!
****courtesy of The Bakersfield Californian****
A shooting suspect in a white Dodge Durango led Bakersfield Police officers on a chase Sunday morning along the runways and around the hangars of the Bakersfield Municipal Airport.
When the armed suspect crashed his vehicle and took off running he was shot by three officers. Police reported Monday he died at Kern Medical Center.
The incident was witnessed by customers and employees of the Rocket Shop Cafe located inside the aiport off of South Union Avenue.
Cafe employee Irene Neri breathlessly recalled the incident:
“I saw the chase up until the shooting. It was a white Durango, I think, and there were about 10 cop cars chasing him. It lasted about 12 minutes in the airport. He was going towards Union but the gates were closed and then he was going to Cottonwood and then all of a sudden we saw him go airborne.”
The incident began at about 9:30 a.m. when the suspect shot a man in the 700 block of Geneva Avenue and took his car, according to the BPD’s news release.
That shooting victim has not yet been identified.
The stolen vehicle was seen by a police officer a few minutes later on Planz Road. Officers attempted a traffic stop, but the suspect refused to stop and after a short chase he smashed through a gate and entered the airport.
The suspect then evaded officers for about 10 minutes, the news release said, before he crashed the Durango.
The following is from the official BPD press release:
Officers went to the vehicle and began ordering the suspect out. There was no response. The officers broke out the rear window at which time they observed the suspect, still sitting in the driver’s seat, reach down towards the floor. He then exited the vehicle armed with a firearm and began running north from the vehicle. The officers ordered him to stop but he refused. Three officers then fired shots striking the suspect.
Later Sunday afternoon, BPD Sgt. Greg Terry said the names of the officers involved and the number of shots fired will likely be released Monday morning. He didn’t know how fast the Durango was going during the pursuit.
About 20 to 40 people were in the Rocket Shop Cafe at the time of the pursuit, according to general manager, Michael Harmon, and “everyone was watching it.”
The pursuit went all over the airport and around the hangers, Harmon said. He arrived 20 minutes after the chase, but his customers and employees filled him in on what happened.
The airport is about 200 acres in size and houses around 100 aircraft, according to the airport’s official Web site.
No one from the restaurant witnessed the actual shooting because it was out of sight from the cafe.
The last BPD officer-involved shooting was almost a year ago when Leon Anderson Jr. died in a Feb. 9 shootout with three officers, including Officer Dennis Eddy who was shot in the chest (while wearing a bulletproof vest) and the leg during that incident.
Eddy returned to work recently.
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
No comments:
Post a Comment