Suspect Arrested After Standoff
The Associated Press
A Boise, Idaho police officer was shot during a routine traffic stop Saturday morning, and the man accused of shooting him was arrested after a four-hour standoff.
Officer Derek Whipps, 32, was in stable condition Saturday night at Saint Alphonsus Regional Medical Center after surgery for a serious gunshot wound to his shoulder, police said.
Suspect Juventino Torres-Vargas, 28, was taken to the Ada County Jail on Saturday evening after police negotiators convinced him to leave a home in the 6700 block of Pomona Road, less than a mile from the shooting site.
A resident said she found the man hiding in her garage and fled.
Witnesses told police Whipps pulled a black Chevrolet Lumina over on Curtis Road near Ustick and was taking the driver?s registration and license back to his patrol car about 11:10 a.m. when the driver got out of his car and shot Whipps.
Two bullets hit Whipps? bulletproof vest; the force knocked him off his feet, police spokeswoman Lynn Hightower said. As he was falling, a third bullet hit him in the shoulder, she said.
“I?ve been shot, I?m down, I?m down,” Whipps said over his police radio.
The officer never had a chance to shoot back at his assailant, interim Police Chief Jim Tibbs said.
Little information about Whipps was available Saturday night except that he is married and has been a Boise police officer since December 2002.
Passersby help officer
Lajos Marinkovic of Boise drove along Curtis just after the shooting and saw Whipps on the ground next to his police car.
“What I saw was an officer down,” Marinkovic said.
“I pulled over and went to him. When I got there, he asked me to make sure the radio was on channel A. I said it was, and he called it in. He was lucid.”
Marinkovic said he helped Whipps take off his jacket and shirt, noticed the bullet-proof vest, and then saw a wound on the officer?s shoulder.
Whipps also had a scrape on the forehead where his head hit the pavement, he said.
Whipps didn?t tell Marinkovic what happened or talk much, he said. A passerby with paramedic experience stayed with Whipps until emergency crews arrived.
Witnesses told police the shooter got back in his car and drove away, heading west on Ustick Road. The Lumina was found abandoned on Ustick Circle.
A man matching the shooter?s description was seen running through the neighborhood. Later, the man was seen in a garage on Pomona Road.
Intruder in the garage
Chalis Biggins, 29, said she noticed a man hiding behind a mattress in her garage while she was working in her yard about 1 p.m.
She told her fiance, David Moe, and Moe ran to flag down police, who were searching the neighborhood, she said.
Biggins went into the house to get her 7-year-old daughter and her daughter?s friend out of the house.
As Biggins hurried out the front door with the children, she saw the man coming in the back door.
“When he came into the house, he kept putting his hands out and said, ?Hey, hey, hey,?” she said. “I just said ?no? and rushed out. He looked like he was just trying to hide.”
Biggins didn?t see a weapon, she said.
Boise police and Ada County sheriff?s deputies converged on the corner of Esquire and Pomona a few blocks from Biggins? house, mapping out the neighborhood in blue and red markers on the hood of an unmarked police vehicle.
Police and sheriff?s tactical response teams surrounded the home.
Shortly after 1:30 p.m. voices echoed over speakers in the neighborhood, as officers began negotiating with Torres-Vargas by phone in Spanish.
Outstanding warrant
Torres-Vargas was wanted on an arrest warrant charging him with aggravated battery in conection with an incident Tuesday, when police said Torres-Vargas shot his girlfriend in the buttocks, Hightower said.
Police had been to their home in the 6700 block of Fairview Avenue more than once on domestiv violence complaints, she said.
Whipps apparently didn?t know about the outstanding warrant when he stopped Torres-Vargas, who was driving a car registered to his girlfriend?s family, Hightower said. It was a routine traffic stop, she said, but she did not know what offense the officer saw.
Officers found the weapon used in the shooting, a .32-caliber handgun, in the utility room of the house. Torres-Vargas told officers where to find it, Hightower said.
Tibbs said the standoff was resolved with “excellent police work,” and he lauded the interagency cooperation needed to coordinate and execute such a massive police operation.
Officers from eight agencies helped with traffic control and other patrols while Boise officers focused on the shooting scene and the Pomona neighborhood.
“We couldn?t have done it alone,” Tibbs said.