IMPD officer shoots and wounds man who fired at police car
INDIANAPOLIS (WISH) — A police officer fired at and injured a man who had shot toward a police car during a foot chase Thursday afternoon in a residential and business area on the city’s west side, Indianapolis police say.
Police Chief Chris Bailey of Indianapolis Metropolitan Police Department said Thursday night during in an impromptu news conference at the crime scene that the man was expected to survive a graze wound to his neck. He was taken to a hospital for treatment. No one else was injured.
The police chief did not publicly identify the man shot or the police officer.
Before the police shooting, Bailey said, IMPD officers were called to a shots fired report at 3:37 p.m. Thursday in the 900 block of South Kiel Avenue. That’s in the Cloverleaf Apartments complex just northeast of the I-465 interchange for West Washington Street on the city’s west side.
Bailey said the man had a disturbance with family members and fired three rounds from a gun in parking lot of Cloverleaf Apartments. The man had also pointed a gun at the family members, police were told.
The man fled before police arrived, but a 911 caller gave a good description of him, and said he was still in the area and armed. So, police began seeking the man.
A short time later, a witness flagged down an officer driving through the area and said the man was still in the area and armed.
Later, another officer found the man in the apartment complex and gave him verbal orders, Bailey said. The man fled on foot, and the officer chased the man several blocks into an area near the apartments that has houses and businesses.
The man, while still being chased on foot in the 1100 block of Waldemere Avenue, fired from a handgun and damaged a marked IMPD car with at least one uniformed officer inside, Bailey said. That’s when the officer chasing the man on foot fired his weapon and struck the man, resulting in the graze wound on the man’s neck.
The computer-aided dispatch system shows Wayne Township Fire Department medics were sent to an emergency medical services incident involving an unsafe gunshot scene at 3:50 p.m. Thursday in the 1000 block of Waldemere Avenue. That’s in the Biltmore Gardens housing addition.
Video on social media showed crime scene tape surrounding an area at the intersection of West Morris Street and West Washington Street, near the Dollar Tree store and the Halal Market grocery. An employee of the dollar store says she saw people running inside the business after the shots were fired, but she did not hear the shots. She says the man is known to people who frequent the area.
The man remained hospitalized at 7 p.m. Thursday, and prosecutors were discussing what criminal charges if any to file against the man, Bailey said.
The public was first alerted to the police shooting in an alert on the X platform, which said, “IMPD officers are on scene of an incident in the 1000 block of Waldemere Avenue. There was an officer-involved shooting. No officers were injured.”
Another post on X from police at 4:17 p.m. Thursday said, “IMPD does not believe there is any outstanding public safety threat to the area at this time. We are asking drivers to avoid this area due to an active and ongoing investigation. Officers will be on scene for the next several hours.”
The officer who shot the man was placed on administrative leave, a standard IMPD practice. Other officers involved in the incident also were placed on administrative leave as they had requested. IMPD has standard practices for investigating police shootings.
Anyone with information was asked to call IMPD Detective Michael Duke at 317-327-3475 or reach out anonymously to Crime Stoppers of Central Indiana.
Thursday’s police shooting was the 15th involving IMPD in 2024. The latest happened Dec. 4, that was the ninth fatal police shooting of 2024. IMPD recorded 18 police shootings in 2023.
IMPD released a news release about the incident on Thursday night.
News 8’s Danielle Zulkosky contributed to this report.
Crime Resources
- Crime Stoppers of Central Indiana: 317-262-8477
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