Associated Press
WASHINGTON — Two police officers are wounded and a man is dead after gunfire broke out at an intersection in northeast Washington.
Uniformed officers with a crime suppression team were in the neighborhood Thursday night after shots were fired there earlier, Police Chief Peter Newsham said at a news conference around midnight. Shots were fired and the officers fired their weapons, he said.
The officers were struck in their lower bodies and a man with gunshot wounds was pronounced dead on the way to the hospital, Newsham said. He said the officers’ injuries didn’t appear to be life-threatening. A weapon was recovered on the scene, he said.
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Police spokesman Dustin Sternbeck said by telephone Friday morning that the officers were in stable condition.
“The two best witnesses that we have, that we know of right now are the two officers, and they’re at the hospital,” Newsham said at the news conference.
He had few details about the circumstances surrounding the shooting, but said during an appearance on WTTG-TV on Friday morning that shots were fired during an interaction between the man and the officers. One officer underwent surgery overnight, but the prognosis for both officers is excellent, he said.
Fellow officers took the wounded officers to a hospital in their cruisers, something Newsham called “not the best practice.” He said it would be reviewed but it was a “tough call.”
“When one of your colleagues has been shot, they’re facing a potentially life-threatening injury, your first instinct is really to try to get them help and that’s what they did,” Newsham said.
Police did not release the names or races of the officers or the man who was fatally shot.