VIDEO: Two Las Vegas Officers Shot In Gunfight
Two Las Vegas Metro Officers ended up in a gunfight during a theft investigation.
Video Shows Two Las Vegas Officers In Gunfight With Suspect
Las Vegas, NV – Two Las Vegas Metropolitan Police Officers were shot Tuesday afternoon when a theft investigation suddenly turned into a gunfight (video below.)
The shooting stemmed from a theft on Sunday where a man had his cell phones stolen from his car while he was in a grocery store.
The theft victim was later able to track the position of his cell phones to a spot where a pickup truck was parked in the 4100 block of West Tompkins Avenue.
At around 4:15 PM on Tuesday, two officers received the report of the cell phone’s location and contacted the occupant of the vehicle, according to the Las Vegas Review-Journal.
The officers talked to the man in the vehicle for several minutes, and asked him to get out of the truck. Instead, the man started up the truck. As officers continued to talk to him, he suddenly pulled a pistol and opened fire on the officers.
One officer ran through the line of fire for cover while the other took a position behind the shooter.
One of the officers was struck through a gap in his ballistic vet, getting shot through the abdomen. The second officer was shot on his gunbelt, which deflected the bullet; he was uninjured.
The officers returned fire and struck the suspect at least once before the man fatally shot himself.
“I got to watch some of the body-worn camera from this incident tonight, and as I stand before you today, I can tell you we are extremely lucky,” Captain Kelly McMahill said. “And I feel very blessed that our officers are able to go home tonight and be with their families.”
A bystander also recorded the gunfight, and that video has now been released.
“It’s happening all across the valley, and now individuals are taking it upon themselves to fire at police officers,” Clark County Sheriff Joseph Lombardo said at a press conference on Tuesday. “This is the situation we’re put in quite often. And this is what we signed up to do. But we didn’t sign up to get shot.”
The injured officer is in stable condition.
You can see video of the gunfight below. The gunfight breaks out around the 1:40 mark:
