TopFeatured.com

DES MOINES, Iowa — A Des Moines police officer who was shot during a domestic call and a chase early Tuesday morning is in serious, but stable condition.

During an update with media Tuesday at 11 a.m., Des Moines Police Sergeant Paul Parizek provided new information on the early morning shooting.

“He is going to recover, the second officer is at home. As the investigation has progressed on with the DCI taking the lead on that, what we’re learning now is it appears that the officer who was injured was actually hit by gunfire from the second officer, that it wasn’t from the suspect. But there is still a lot of work to be done, that’s what we’re looking at right now,” said Parizek.

The suspect was in thick vegetation after he drove his car off the road. The suspect got out of the vehicle and ran, and Parizek said the body camera video revealed the suspect was running then stopped, turning to face the officers and produced a handgun. The suspect had the gun pointed at his own head, but in a split second had the firearm held out with two arms pointing it right at the officers. That is the moment officers fired their weapons, leaving the suspect dead at the scene.

“These incidents are very rare,” said Parizek. “…it’s a sad tragedy. It doesn’t change what those officers experienced in that moment, what the threat was against them and what they thought and felt. It changes the impact of trauma on them for sure, but it doesn’t change the fact that they very courageously confronted a person who had committed a crime and had presented himself as being armed, wanting to harm them.”

Parizek described the scene with the 37-year-old officer who was shot, was positioned up to the front left of the officer who had accidentally shot him. Body camera video, according to police, shows the officer behind creating space between the suspect and himself while moving left, which lined up the injured officer in the line of sight.

The bullet appears to have gone through the right shoulder of the injured officer. Police said that the injured officer had thought it was the suspect who had shot him.

“When you watch the video, the officer who’s injured actually kind of bends forward, turns around says ‘I’m hit, I’ve been hit, shot in the chest,’ and that is when the officers started giving him first aid,” said Parizek.

The injured officer is in good spirits in the hospital, already asking when he is able to get back to work. The other officer is on leave as the DCI investigation continues.

As for the suspect who violated the no-contact order, police say that information is coming together.

“There’s some frightening pieces to that, it looks like he lives in Nebraska. Hey may have had a relationship with this victim sometime back. She hadn’t heard anything from him in a very long time. He showed up on her doorstop Friday, she immediately went and applied for the no-contact order. It looks like he had an existing order with another person in Nebraska.”

Parizek said that the car the suspect crashed was stolen.

“We know that the car he was driving was stolen from Council Bluffs several days ago and the license plates on it were stolen locally here, I believe, yesterday,” said Parizek. “So that indicates quite a bit of premeditation itself.”

The name of the male deceased suspect will be made available once the family is notified. The names of the officers who were involved will be released as the DCI continues the investigation.