By Mara H. Gottfried
St. Paul Pioneer Press
ST. PAUL, Minn. — A man is under arrest after allegedly shooting at a car with an off-duty St. Paul police officer inside Wednesday afternoon. The officer was uninjured.
Sgt. John Lozoya, in his personal vehicle and not in uniform, was driving in St. Paul’s Payne-Phalen area on Brainerd Avenue.
As he approached Desoto Street, he saw two males standing in the middle of the intersection about 12:15 p.m., said Peter Panos, police spokesman.
Lozoya stopped and told the males to get out of the street so they wouldn’t get hit, because it was snowy and icy, Panos said. He did not identify himself as an officer, he said.
Without saying anything, one of the males pulled out a gun and fired one shot at Lozoya’s car as he started driving away, Panos said. It didn’t strike the vehicle.
The males ran north on Desoto, but witnesses saw them go into a nearby home, in the 1200 block of Desoto Street, Panos said. Officers surrounded the home and went inside, taking four people into custody.
Lozoya, a St. Paul officer since 1994, identified a 25-year-old man as the shooter and a 17-year-old boy as the other person in the street, Panos said. They were arrested on suspicion of aggravated assault.
The man, whose identity police were trying to verify, was booked into the Ramsey County Jail and the teen into the county’s juvenile detention center.
Copyright 2009 St. Paul Pioneer Press