By Alexa Coultoff
Tampa Bay Times
TAMPA, Fla. — A Tampa police officer was wounded in a shooting near Busch Gardens Wednesday morning, after which the suspected shooter died from a self-inflicted gunshot wound, police said.
The officer, 40-year-old Jordan Laupert, was in stable condition at a local hospital, according to Tampa police Chief Lee Bercaw.
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Shortly before 8:15 a.m. Wednesday, the suspect came to the department’s district office at 9330 N. 30th St., then started walking along 30th Street, where he got Laupert’s attention, according to details provided by Bercaw at a news conference and in a department news release.
Bercaw said Laupert and the suspect, Jaylin Greene, 21, had a “cordial conversation” through a fence. Then, as Laupert walked toward the back door of the district office, Greene shot him in the leg, Bercaw said.
Body camera footage released by the department Wednesday afternoon shows Laupert telling Greene the address of the department’s headquarters and Greene saying “Thank you.” Laupert then began walking back toward the building before the camera cuts out.
Greene fled across the street to the Annie Street entrance of Busch Gardens at the 9300 block of North 30th Street, Bercaw said. Officers followed and found him dead there with a self-inflicted gunshot wound to the head, Bercaw said.
Investigators believe he was experiencing a mental health crisis, according to police.
Officers applied a tourniquet to Laupert’s leg before he was taken to a local hospital, police said.
“I’m thankful to be standing before you today to tell you my officer is in the hospital in stable condition and good spirits despite what happened today,” Bercaw said.
Laupert, who joined the department in 2015, is assigned as a school resource officer at Hillsborough High School but was temporarily assigned to uniform street patrol, which is standard for school resource officers during the summer months, police said.
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