Two unrelated police shootings - one in North Little Rock and one in Little Rock - left one man dead and another critically injured Wednesday.
North Little Rock Police Department spokesman Sgt. Brian Dedrick said an officer responding to a distress call on a city bus near West Fourth and Maple streets shot a man Wednesday afternoon who died not long after at UAMS Medical Center in Little Rock.
Officers described the dead man as “older,” possibly in his 50s, and said his name was being withheld pending notification of his next of kin.
Meanwhile, officials with the Little Rock Police Department said Michael McCormack, 31, was shot after he robbed a convenience store and pointed a gun at a police-dog handler, who opened fire.
McCormack was listed in critical care at a Little Rock hospital Wednesday night, according to reports.
In both shootings, the officers who pulled the triggers have not been identified, and both have been placed on administrative leave per their departments’ policies.
According to Dedrick, the shooting in North Little Rock started with a 12:13 p.m. 911 phone call from inside a Central Arkansas Transit Authority bus. The caller said there was a man with a cane “trying to assault people on the bus.”
An officer met the bus, which stopped outside First Presbyterian Church of North Little Rock, and the man got off the bus with the officer. Reports are unclear whether the man willingly exited.
According to police, the man turned his anger on the officer and started swinging a cane, striking the officer at least once.
The officer fired his weapon, striking the man at least once. The man fell along the sidewalk on the south side of the church.
He was treated by paramedics and transported to UAMS Medical Center, while the officer was taken to Baptist Hospital Medical Center in North Little Rock for treatment of non-life-threatening injuries, according to reports.
Details about the disturbance on the bus and how the situation escalated to the point of use of deadly force remain under investigation, Dedrick said.
“This will take some time,” Dedrick said. “We’ll be interviewing at least 20 to 25 individuals that were on the bus at the point … the [Central Arkansas Transit] driver called.”
After the shooting, officers used a metal detector to search for evidence, including bullet casings, in the mix of ice and snow that coated the scene.
A long cane with a brass top rested on the sidewalk along with several garments that officers said belonged to the deceased man.
Officers wouldn’t say how many times the police officer fired or where the man was hit, but a witness said she heard three gunshots.
Melissa Wiggs’ office is across the street from where the shooting happened. She said that when she heard the shots, she looked out the window and saw the man “rolling around on the ground” while the officer, gun in hand, spoke to him.
Wiggs, 37, said that within moments, more officers swarmed the intersection, and that paramedics performed CPR on the man “at least six or seven” times before he was taken away in an ambulance.
The officer, she said, appeared to have a sprained or broken wrist.
In the Little Rock shooting, no officers were hurt, according to Little Rock Police Department spokesman Lt. Sidney Allen. Allen wouldn’t elaborate on McCormack’s injuries, other than to say that he was shot at least once after he pointed his gun toward a dog-handling officer who had told him to drop the weapon.
According to police reports, McCormack walked into the Mapco Max Mart at 8101 Stagecoach Road about 2:40 a.m., poured a cup of coffee, then walked up to the counter, but instead of paying, he ordered the clerk to give him all the money in her cash register and grabbed three beers from a nearby cooler.
He left the store and headed into some nearby woods, according to reports. Officers said they followed his tracks in the snow and, with the help of two police dogs, found him lying in the woods about 200 yards from the business.
Allen said the officers tried to negotiate with McCormack and eventually sicced a police dog on him, but to no avail.
McCormack “then pointed his gun at officers with his finger on the trigger,” and one police-dog handler fired several times, police reported.
In both shootings, investigators have started internal and criminal investigations.
For the North Little Rock Police Department, Wednesday’s shooting was the first officer-involved fatal gunfire in more than three years.
In 2010, the department had three officer-shooting fatalities, all of which were ruled justified by the prosecuting attorney’s office.
Since 2011, there have been nine Little Rock Police Department officer-related fatal shootings.
Arkansas, Pages 9 on 03/06/2014