By Gretchen Wenner
Bakersfield Californian
BAKERSFIELD, Calif. — A police officer shot and injured a male suspect carrying a large knife in east Bakersfield Sunday afternoon.
It was the department’s second officer-involved shooting in as many days.
The incident in the empty parking lot of Andre’s Drive In, at Niles and Virginia streets, drew seemingly incongruous accounts from eyewitnesses -- some who watched from a church across the street where shell casings apparently landed.
Initial details from police are these: At about 1:25 p.m. a female officer in the area was flagged down regarding a man carrying a knife and acting suspiciously, said Bakersfield police Sgt. Randy Robison.
Another group, in a van at the Andre’s Drive In parking lot, flagged down the officer and pointed out the subject, described as a white male in his late teens.
The officer, who wasn’t identified, got out of her car, saw the teen had a large knife and told him to stop and drop it. He turned around and threw the knife at her and a citizen who’d been in the van.
“She had to duck,” Robison said.
The officer approached the teen with her gun pulled and aimed at him, telling him to lie on the ground.
The teen instead reached into his pocket, pulled out a second knife and unfolded it. He took several steps toward her, a police release said, and she fired at him.
The teen, who received non-life-threatening injuries, was taken to Kern Medical Center.
Police retrieved two knives from the scene, including a large, fixed-blade hunting knife.
A couple who saw the shooting close up were critical of the officer’s actions.
Jennifer Lopez and her husband, who said he didn’t want to give reporters his name because he was on probation, had pulled into the Andre’s parking lot to try to help the young man. They were the second group police said had flagged down the officer.
“We didn’t call the police to do what they did,” she said. They’d hoped officers could talk to the teen about what was troubling him.
Lopez’s husband was standing near the officer when the teen threw the knife. Both she and her husband said the weapon was lobbed high over the officer’s head, posing no real danger.
Cheaquanda Bush, 19, was among a group of churchgoers who saw the shooting while outside Niles New Life Church, diagonally across from the Andre’s parking lot.
The group was concerned because the gunfire took place so close to the church while a large number of congregants’ children were outside.
Copyright 2009 Bakersfield Californian