BELLEFONTAINE NEIGHBORS, Mo.— Two police officers were shot in the chest — but saved by their bulletproof vests — by a gunman who then barricaded himself in a home in north St. Louis County Thursday morning.
The standoff ended about 3 p.m. with the suspect taken into custody inside the home, St. Louis County police said. He had been shot in the “upper body” and was taken to a hospital. His injury was not believed to be life-threatening.
Police said an officer had fired one round at the suspect at about 11:12 a.m. after he had fired at them from the back of the home.
Police said they were unsure whether that round hit the suspect or if he had been wounded in the earlier encounter with Bellefontaine Neighbors officers. No officers were hit by the suspect’s gunfire during the standoff.
Two handguns were recovered from the residence, police said.
At a news conference after the standoff ended, County Police Sgt. Shawn McGuire declined to identify the man until charges are filed but said he is 37 and is believed to live in the home where the standoff took place.
McGuire said the man was arrested quietly. “There was no struggle,” he said.
The incident began Thursday morning when, a witness said, the man opened fire on the officers from about 15 feet after they tried to subdue him in a scuffle on a front lawn. The officers had stopped him as he walked along the street because he was suspected of firing shots in the neighborhood the night before.
The two Bellefontaine Neighbors officers whose vests absorbed the impact of the bullets were released after being evaluated at a hospital.
After the shooting, the gunman ran away and entered a home a block or two away, near Bellefontaine Road and Crete Drive.
An “officer-in-need-of-aid” call rallied dozens of officers from neighboring agencies who descended on the area of Chambers Road and Bellefontaine Road at about 7:30 a.m. Thursday. St. Louis County Police Officer Benjamin Granda said the county’s tactical operations unit was called to the scene to help Bellefontaine Neighbors.
McGuire said the officers’ vests blocked “both of the rounds.” While he didn’t have specifics on the officers’ injuries, McGuire said an officer shot in the chest while wearing a vest can experience severe bruising and possible injury to internal organs.
Both officers were taken to a hospital but released later in the day, with the vests apparently crucial in protecting them from the gunfire.
“They were wearing their bulletproof vests, so thank God,” Bellefontaine Neighbors Mayor Bob Doerr told The St. Louis Post-Dispatch. “They’re going to be OK.”
The encounter stemmed from a report Wednesday night that shots were fired in the neighborhood. McGuire said Bellefontaine Neighbors police couldn’t find the suspect that night, but decided to keep an eye on the house.
At 7:15 a.m. Thursday, a neighbor called police when the suspected gunman was seen walking down the street. Police stopped the man, talked to him and tried to arrest him, McGuire said. He resisted and officers used a Taser to try to subdue him. That didn’t work, and the man pulled a handgun and shot the officers, police said.
The gunman ran off. One officer fired at him, but it’s not clear if he was hit, police said.
The mayor identified the injured officers as a male sergeant and a female police officer. The sergeant is 44 years old and has been in law enforcement half his life, the last eight years with Bellefontaine Neighbors, police say. The female officer is 25 years old. City records show she was hired in 2014.
A witness, Steve Jones, said he saw three police cars on Bellefontaine Road. He said the officers were “trying to reason with this guy in the front yard, and all of the sudden it was a tackle to the ground.
“Next thing I know … this guy starts to stand up, there’s pepper spray deployed from the officers, and then this guy gets up about 15 feet from the officers and starts shooting.”
Jones said, “And then when he’s done shooting, he runs a little bit and then walks to a house and goes in a house right down the street.”
Jones said he called 911.
“It looked like all three officers were down, so I didn’t know if they were able to call or not.”
Donald Cook, who has lived in the neighborhood for 10 years, said he knows who the suspect is.
“He’s the weird one of the neighborhood,” Cook said. “His cars are painted weird. He changes up the paint job every month. He paints his cars different colors.”
Cook was among a half-dozen onlookers standing on Jepson Drive, about 150 yards from the suspect’s home. They were behind crime-scene tape but well within view of the snipers and police dogs.
It was a dangerous morning for officers in the area. An officer patrolling Jennings was injured about 6 a.m. when a car struck the side of the officer’s squad car. The injuries appeared to be minor.
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(Denise Hollinshed, J.B. Forbes and Robert Cohen of the Post-Dispatch contributed to this report.)
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