By Mark Hicks
The Detroit News
DETROIT — A Detroit Public Schools Community District police officer died Thursday night after responding to an incident earlier near a high school, according to published reports and school officials.
Superintendent Nikolai Vitti described Officer Freddie Wilson’s death as sudden but did not provide details in a statement Thursday.
“Officer Wilson devoted more than 20 years with DPSCD,” he said. “Our thoughts and prayers go to the Wilson Family.”
The officer had been injured after responding to a large fight Thursday afternoon involving students in a neighborhood near Henry Ford High School on the city’s west side, Fox 2 Detroit reported.
Detroit Police Department representatives did not respond to requests for comment Thursday night on their involvement in any probe related to the officer’s death.
In his statement provided through a district representative, Vitti did not release additional details Thursday night about events surrounding Wilson’s death.
“We are actively investigating the incident and request that everyone wait to pass judgment regarding the incident and his cause of death until an investigation is complete,” he said. “It already appears as if misinformation is being reported.”
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In 2018, a Detroit Public Schools officer was shot in the leg while off-duty in an incident that left his wife and two of her relatives dead, The Detroit News reported. The officer was Freddie Wilson, WDIV-TV ( Channel 4) reported.
Police described the incident as a domestic dispute involving the daughter of Wilson’s sister-in-law and her boyfriend that led to a nearly 14-hour standoff with officers.
Lance Smith, 49, attacked his live-in girlfriend, Cynthia Williams, as well as her mother, Barbara Ann Williams, and aunt Patricia Wilson, Freddie Wilson’s wife, who lived across the street and went to help. The standoff ended when Smith fatally shot himself.
“The loss of these treasures is heartbreaking and even more unimaginable knowing they died tragically in a senseless and savage trilogy of murder,” the Wilson and Williams family wrote in a statement at the time.
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