ST. LOUIS (AP) — A St. Louis police officer shot and killed a man who was armed with a semiautomatic weapon that had an extended magazine after he didn’t comply with a command to drop the weapon, authorities say.
Police Chief John Hayden said officers stopped the 28-year-old man around 9:30 p.m. Thursday while patrolling in a “heavily trafficked drug area,” the St.. Louis Post-Dispatch reports. The scene also is near a gas station where a 14-year-old was critically wounded two days earlier in the parking lot.
rel="nofollow"During the stop, the man took off running, with the officer in pursuit. Hayden says the officer saw that the man had a weapon but isn’t sure whether the suspect fired before he was killed. His name wasn’t immediately released.
It wasn’t immediately clear why officers stopped the man. Hayden described it as a “pedestrian check,” which he said occurs when an officer has “reasonable suspicion” to stop a person.
The shooting was the second one involving city police on Thursday. Around 3 a.m., an officer shot a man in the knee after he pointed a gun at officers, Hayden said.
