LITTLE ROCK — After witnessing two individuals break into one car and then hop into another one to flee, a Little Rock police officer shot and killed the driver as it “approached” him during its escape from a west Little Rock apartment complex early Sunday morning, police said.
The driver, who police did not identify nor give an age or sex for on Sunday, marked the second person to be shot and killed by a Little Rock officer in less than 48 hours, and the fourth to be killed in an officer-involved shooting this year.
Police received a call at 5:15 a.m. that someone was “possibly breaking into cars” at the Shadow Lake Apartments at 13111 W. Markham St., according to a statement issued by department spokesman Sgt. Cassandra Davis.
The first officer to arrive at the complex was Little Rock patrol officer Josh Hastings, who told investigators that he spotted two people breaking into a parked car, according to Davis.
The officer watched the two hop into a nearby Honda Civic and Davis said Hastings “fired upon the vehicle as it approached him as the vehicle was attempting to flee the parking lot.”
Hastings “fired his weapon striking and killing the juvenile driver of the Honda Civic,” according to Davis’ statement. Two other under-age passengers in the car - which police said was reported stolen Wednesday - fled on foot.
They were both arrested a short time later, police said, and were both charged with breaking and entering.
More details of the shooting were unavailable Sunday night, and attempts to reach Davis were unsuccessful because the voice mailbox for her department cell phone was full.
Pulaski County Coroner Gerone Hobbs did not return calls for information about the dead suspect.
The shooting has prompted two separate investigations, one criminal, and one internal, which is standard procedure for officer-involved shootings in Little Rock.
The internal investigation will evaluate whether or not the shooting followed the department’s policy governing deadly use of force, also known as General Order 303.
According to the policy, deadly force is “an act of last resort” only to be used when “reasonable alternatives” are impractical or have failed.
Officers are authorized to use deadly force “to protect themselves or others from what they reasonably believe to bean immediate threat of death or serious physical injury.”
Hastings, who has been with the department for five years, was put on paid administrative leave after the shooting.
Since Friday, two other Little Rock officers were placed on paid leave after a domestic disturbance call in the Leawood neighborhood that led them to open fire on a man police say was armed with a gun.
Officers Matthew Hoffine and James Anderson were sent to 1107 Gillette Drive and met by Tabitha Risle, 29, who told them that she and her live-in boyfriend, Donald O’Fallon, 43, had been arguing “all day” and that he had hit her in the head.
O’Fallon stepped out of the house, reports said, armed with a handgun that he pointed at the officers, who both fired at O’Fallon, striking him twice.
The two shootings bring the total of police-involved fatal shootings this year to four.
On May 22, Little Rock officer Terry McDaniel shot and killed 19-year-old Charles Edward Murry in the 300 block of South Thayer after Murry pointed a gun at McDaniel.
Murry was involved in a botched burglary seconds before encountering McDaniel, police said, where he shot and killed one man and wounded another.
On Jan. 17, Angelo Clark, 31, was shot and killed by police during an early morning drug raid at his 1322 S. Tyler St. home.
According to police, Clark pointed a loaded AK-47 assault rifle at officers as they came in.
Both shootings were ruled justified by the Pulaski County prosecutor’s office.
Sunday morning’s shooting marks the 33rd homicide in Little Rock this year. In 2011, there were a total of 37 homicides.
Arkansas, Pages 7 on 08/13/2012