Police shoot armed man at NW Detroit convenience store
(CBS DETROIT) – Police opened fire during an incident Monday morning in Northwest Detroit. They shot an armed man who had locked himself inside a convenience store with a clerk.
"[It's] very unusual circumstance. We don't know if robbery was the motive," Detroit Police Chief James White told reporters.
But Detroit Police know that around 7:20 a.m., a man carrying a gun loaded with an extended clip and two other magazines walked into the Quik Mart on Eight Mile near Berg Road, locking the door behind him.
The store's cameras are linked to police headquarters, where they watched the scene unfold.
"The man is in location. He has like a windbreaker jacket on. He looks like he has a weapon that is exposed. But the clerk is very scared. I tried to talk to him and ask him if he was threatening, but he couldn't answer me," a dispatcher said on scanner traffic captured by Broadcastify.com.
Chief White said once the suspect was inside the locked store, he began walking through the aisles erratically. Eventually, a customer walked up and waved her off with his weapon. Then officers showed up.
"They see him. He's standing at the door. He's got the weapon. It appears that he points the weapon at the officer at some point. Officers yelling, and you can hear the officer yelling, 'drop the weapon! drop the weapon'. And the officer fires multiple shots," White said.
At least four rounds were fired by a seven-year veteran on the force, according to White.
The suspect who didn't pull the trigger was taken to the hospital in serious condition.
No one else was hurt.
"He's got a criminal history and nothing that rises to this level, but we're looking at doing a profile of who he is. We don't know what his intentions are. But we will be looking at absolutely everything to see, you know, perhaps what his plans were," White said.