St. Pete Police ID Officers Killed In Shootout
ST. PETERSBURG (CBS4) - As South Florida mourned the loss of two Miami-Dade police officers who were killed last week while trying to serve a warrant on a man in Liberty City, two St. Petersburg officers were killed and a U.S. Marshal was injured under eerily similar circumstances.
It happened early Monday morning when a U.S. marshal, a Pinellas County deputy and a St. Petersburg detective went to a home to arrest 39-year old Hydra Lacy Jr. on an aggravated battery charge. When they learned Lacy was in the attic with a weapon, they called for back up.
Two of the officers who arrived to help were Sgt. Thomas Baitinger and Officer Jeffrey Yaslowitz.
Approximately 20 minutes later, police said Lacy started shooting at the police.
"You really never actually thought you'd see bullets shooting back and forth. They went boom, boom, boom and the guy bang, bang, bang. So it's like 'Is this really happening in real life?'," said Patricia Thomas.
When it was over, Baitinger and Yaslowitz were dead. A U.S. marshal, whose name was not released, was shot twice but was doing fine, according to Chief Deputy U.S. Marshal Tom Figmik.
A SWAT team surrounded the home and after a six hour stand off, police stormed inside to find the body of Lacy, the brother of Jeff Lacy, former International Boxing Federation super middleweight champion, lay dead either by his own hand or police bullets.
These deaths added to a grim tally for the nation: 11 officers shot in five states in a 24-hour period, two of them fatally. For the month, police officers have died in the line of duty nationwide, according to the National Law Enforcement Officers Memorial Fund.
"That's not normal," said Steven Groeninger, a spokesman for the group. "It kind of seems like law enforcement, because of their uniform, have a target on their back."
On Sunday, a man opened fire inside a Detroit police precinct, wounding four officers including a commander before he was shot and killed by police. The officers' injuries were not considered life-threatening, Police Chief Ralph Godbee said.
Also on Sunday, sheriff's deputies in Washington state were shot at a Walmart while responding to a call reporting a suspicious person, according to the memorial group. Police officers in both Indianapolis and Lincoln City, Ore., were critically injured in shootings during traffic stops.
(©2011 CBS Local Media, a division of CBS Radio Inc. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten, or redistributed. The Associated Press contributed to this report.)
