Early Wednesday morning, an incident on Luthe Road resulted in a fatal police shooting of a 26-year-old armed suspect during an operation led by the U.S. Marshal’s Gulf Coast Violent Offenders and Fugitive Task Force. City of Houston News reported that officers were executing a felony warrant related to an aggravated assault of a family member.
According HPD officers, a perimeter was set and a team moved in to confront the suspect, ordered in English and Spanish to leave the residence, but, the suspect fired a weapon from inside, then emerged with a long gun, leading one officer, identified as S. Tharp of HPD's Major Offenders Division, to shoot and fatally wound the individual deemed a threat. Tharp, an officer since 2010, was unharmed.
The identity of the deceased suspect is yet to be verified by the Harris County Institute of Forensic Sciences. The location where the event unfolded falls within Harris County's jurisdiction, which has made the Harris County Sheriff's Office the primary body overseeing the investigation into the shooting.
This shooting, like others involving HPD personnel, is subject to a multi-tier review by the HPD Special Investigations Unit, the Internal Affairs Division, and the Harris County District Attorney’s Office as such procedure is routine for officer-involved shootings, to unravel whether the deployment of deadly force was warranted, and no officers were reported injured.
