St. Paul Officer Wounded, Two Civilians Dead
Oct. 24--Two shootings involving St. Paul officers killing suspects occurred several hours apart, and one of the officers who was shot and wounded during the later incident in a school parking lot is scheduled for surgery Wednesday.
Police officials say they will have more to reveal Wednesday about the shootings, the first occurring about 4 p.m. Tuesday. They did say that the incidents are not related. The identities of the two men who were killed have yet to be released.
The officer was in stable condition with multiple wounds ahead of surgery at Regions Hospital in St. Paul, police said. Authorities have yet to identify the officer or detail where he was shot.
In that incident, according to St. Paul Police Chief Thomas Smith, officers were called around 11 p.m. Tuesday about a theft from a home in the 1100 block of Flandrau Street, near the intersection of Maryland and White Bear Avenues.
Smith continued:
About 11:30 p.m., two officers in a squad car believed they had seen someone matching the description of the suspect from the earlier theft. The man was spotted in a parking lot near Payne and Minnehaha Avenues, across the street from the department's Eastern District station and about 3 miles to the west of the Flandreau Street residence.
Police pulled up, and at some point the suspect opened fire, striking one of the officers and the car. Police returned fire in the parking lot of Hope Community Academy, a K-8 charter school..
The amount of time before shots were fired and who fired at the suspect were among the facts under investigation early Wednesday. Police did not name the officers involved.
The incident highlighted the series of challenges a police officer faces while on duty, the chief said.
"It's a very dangerous job, and we're just very lucky that the officer wasn't injured any more severely than he was," Smith said.
In the shooting incident earlier in the day, St. Paul police were acting on a request by Minneapolis police to stop a driver who was the subject of a drug investigation. The suspect's car was being stopped on Jessamine Avenue near Westminster Street in the Payne-Phalen neighborhood when the driver took "evasive action towards the officers," said St. Paul police Sgt. Paul Paulos.
"It was at that time that officers thought their life was in jeopardy," Paulos said, declining to elaborate on the driver's actions or whether he was armed.
About a dozen officers from both departments were at the scene when the shooting occurred.
Two St. Paul officers were involved in the shooting, Paulos said. Police declined to name them Tuesday evening, and said they are investigating who fired weapons and how many shots were fired.
Two other men in the car were held for questioning.
Police released few details about how events unfolded, but an unmarked police SUV had clearly been involved in a crash with the deceased man's car, and a window was broken or shot out.
David Graf, who lives nearby, said about a dozen officers in full body armor were training their guns on the car and "were converging."
They pulled the driver out and laid him in the street, pulling his T-shirt over his head, and then took out the two passengers, he said. Most of the officers were wearing black clothing marked with police identification, he said.
Minneapolis police Sgt. William Palmer declined to elaborate Wednesday on his department's role in the case, noting that the narcotics investigation remains open.
Star Tribune staff writer Kelly Smith contributed to this report.
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