Earlier today, a suspect involved in a shooting in St. Louis's Forest Park Southeast neighborhood was fatally shot by police following a pursuit, a sequence of events that began with a response to gunshots and ended in a vacant lot. FOX 2 Now reports that officers initially answered a call after 2 a.m. about a shooting on Manchester off Sarah Street near the Grove, where they discovered a wounded man who was subsequently hospitalized.
According to First Alert 4, police disseminated a description of the shooting suspect observed departing the scene on a moped and a secondary officer attempted to stop the suspect near Manchester and Sarah Avenues but the suspect fled, prompting a chase that involved detectives from the Drug Enforcement and Intervention unit, the chase halted in a vacant lot in the 3900 block of Clayton where events took a fatal turn.
The pursuit culminated when the individual, dismounting his moped, reportedly refused to comply with police orders and reached into a bag, a response which led two detectives to discharge their firearms, as stated in the official account from the St. Louis Metropolitan Police Department obtained by KSDK. The suspect died at the scene and no officers were harmed during the incident.
The Force Investigation Unit has taken charge of the ongoing investigation to unravel the circumstances leading to the use of deadly force, the detectives' decision-making process in this critical moment is under review. No further information has been released about the condition of the man who was shot earlier, nor about any potential charges that might have been pending against the suspect at the time of the fatal encounter.
