The Associated Press
SPARKS, Nev. (AP) -- A suspected car thief shot to death by an undercover Sparks police officer jeopardized the lives of police and nearby pedestrians by ramming his car into others in an attempt to escape, police said.
John Franklin McCoy, 24, died Tuesday night after an undercover Sparks police officer on the regional gang unit shot him at least twice in the neck area, Reno police said.
Reno Deputy Police Chief Jim Weston said gang unit officers had been watching the Sparks man because he was a suspect in an ongoing series of Saturn thefts in the region, as well as recent sporting good store burglaries.
There also was a warrant for McCoy’s arrest, charging him with failing to comply with sentencing on a domestic violence charge.
About 11 p.m. Tuesday, gang unit members surrounded McCoy, who was sitting in his car in the 7-Eleven parking lot at 15th Street and Prater Way in Sparks.
Weston said officers positioned their cars to prevent McCoy’s escape when he suddenly rammed his car into an unmarked police vehicle.
Officers wearing marked police raid jackets were standing near his vehicle as he tried to ram his way out, Weston said.
“The officers yelled and identified themselves as police,” Weston told the Reno Gazette-Journal.
“The officer fired at (McCoy) to prevent him from ramming the cars and injuring the officers who were standing right there, as well as the pedestrians and motorists who were in the area,” he said.
Weston said the store’s outside surveillance camera caught the entire incident, which he said “happened in about 10 seconds.”
Besides the seven officers on the scene, Weston said there were three witnesses.
Friends of McCoy questioned why police took such drastic measures to stop him.
“He was not the type that would carry any type of a weapon,” Cody Elder told KOLO-TV in Reno. “He was not the type that would do anything stupid.”
The Sparks officer who shot McCoy is on restricted duty, pending the outcome of the investigation, Weston said. He has been with Sparks police for more than seven years, he said.
McCoy had been released in August from the Washoe County jail on accusations of obstructing and resisting arrest and criminal contempt.
He was arrested in June inside the Reno Gazette-Journal building along the Truckee River after police found him hiding there after he fled from officers. This was after being handcuffed for providing false information when the car he was riding in was stopped for speeding.
At the time, McCoy told the newspaper he ran from police because “I didn’t want to go to jail.”
Weston said officers on Tuesday night intended to arrest him on the warrant and talk to him about some burglaries.