A Chicago police officer shot and injured a man running from police in the South Chicago neighborhood Tuesday night, authorities said.
The 25-year-old man was shot multiple times but expected to survive, according to Patrick Camden, a spokesman for the Fraternal Order of Police union.
About 9:10 p.m., police officers approached a group of people standing together in the 8900 block of South Burley Avenue, according to a preliminary statement from the Chicago Police Department.
A 25-year-old man with a chrome object in his waistband began walking away, and when police asked him to stop, he took off running, Camden said.
What happened next remains unclear.
Camden said that as the man ran, he reached repeatedly for the object in his waistband. When the man turned toward an officer with the object in his hand, a second officer opened fire, striking the man in the leg and the arm, Camden said.
A local resident standing near the crime scene two hours later, however, shared a different account.
Charlene "Nana" Brown, 19, said the man had been running from police with his hands in the air when he was shot.
"He slowed down real quick, like he got shot in the back," she said. The man, whom Brown knows from growing up in the same neighborhood, fell steps later after apparently being shot again, she said.
Camden rejected the suggestion the man's hands had been raised skyward.
"If he was running with his hands in the air, I assure you, he wouldn't have been shot," the union spokesman said. "The officer, when he took action, was fearing for his partner's life. You don't fear for your partner's life if somebody's got their hands in the air."
Police did not immediately recover a weapon. A large number of onlookers crowded the area after the shooting, according to both residents and police, which Camden said complicated the efforts of officers to secure the crime scene.
The shooting happened in the midst of a 9-hour period in which at least 18 other people were shot, three of them fatally, across the city. It was the third police-involved shooting since Sunday morning.
Copyright 2013 - Chicago Tribune
McClatchy-Tribune News Service
