Man Killed During Officer-Involved Shooting In Downtown Austin Entertainment District [UPDATED]

AUSTIN, TX — Austin Police Department officers fatally shot a 24-year-old black man early Sunday in the city's downtown entertainment district after an initial report of shots fired into the air, according to the interim police chief.

The shooting occurred on Trinity Street between 6th and 7th streets just past 2:30 a.m. following closing time for bars along the popular corridor. Police issued a tweet just after 3 a.m. urging people to avoid the area as they conducted their investigation.

In a morning news conference hours later on Sunday morning, Interim Police Chief Brian Manley said the incident began after a call related to a man firing shots into the air in front of one of the many bars lining the 6th Street corridor.

After a description of the suspect was issued to police, the search for the suspect began. Within minutes, the suspect was located holding a handgun, according to Manley. Upon being spotted by police, the man gave chase, running westbound on 6th Street before turning on Trinity Street, the interim chief said.

At one point during the chase, the suspect turned around and fired at officer, the interim chief said. Manley added that a shell casing at the scene yielded evidence of the shooting, consistent with the caliber weapon of the suspect's weapon demonstrating he fired off a shot.

Other casings from the suspect's weapon were recovered in front of the nightclub where the original shot into the air had been fired and another along 600 Trinity Street, Manley said.

The man shot by police was a 24-year-old African American male, Manley said. Two officers fired their weapons in the encounter, a sergeant who's been on the police force 18 years and another with seven years of service to the department, Manley said.

From its beginning to end, the deadly incident claiming the life of another civilian in what is just the latest in a series of officer-involved shootings took place in mere minutes. Manley provided a chronology:

• At 2:39 a.m., the report of shots fired comes in.
• By 2:41 a.m., a physical description of the suspect is distributed based on surveillance footage drawn from the city's High Activity Location Observation (HALO) network of cameras installed in the area.
• By 2:42 a.m., the shooting involving officers occurs.
• At 2:48 a.m., the man shot by police is taken to the hospital.
• After being admitted to the hospital, the man is pronounced dead at 3:08 a.m.

In other words, the entire incident—from the initial call to police to the culmination ending in the suspect's death—all took place within a 30-minute span of time. The dead man has not been identified, nor have the two officers involved in the shooting.

In the moments after the shooting, several unofficial reports from witnesses were posted with the immediacy of social media as an official accounting took hours to occur, requiring the gathering of members of police and the district attorney's office, led by DA Margaret Moore.

Manley urged anyone with phone video of the encounter to share it with police by contacting them to help them with their investigation. Manley indicated there were many people still in the area as the incident was occurring. According to witnesses posting on social media, dozens of police officers descended on the scene, and the deceased civilian was shot multiple times.

Manley did not specify the number of times the officer fired, citing the ongoing nature of the investigation. Reports on social media indicate an argument may have led to the shooting, but Manley also declined specifics while citing the ongoing nature of the investigation.

This marks the third officer-involved shooting in Austin in just the past few days and the seventh in a span of recent months.

On May 2, a police officer opened fire on a distraught 20-year-old his Spanish-speaking mother reportedly is said to have reported as suicidal after an argument with his girlfriend. Police said the man was brandishing a gun before a police officer fired from his rifle as he approached his mother on the driveway of a home along the 11300 block of Long Winter Drive.

Interim Police Chief Brian Manley said the officer fired his weapon "...in defense of the mother's life," while adding no dashcam video corroborating police accounts exists given the position of the parked police cars at the scene.

Before that shooting on April 7, Lawrence Burrell Parrish, 31, was shot by police after they responded to a disturbance along the 6300 block of Parliament Drive in East Austin. Manley initially said the man fired his weapon at officers first before being shot by police, but subsequently retracted that official account in saying the shooting victim hadn't fired his weapon. Parrish survived the shooting and was jailed after being treated for injuries at a hospital.

Other recent officer-involved shootings in Austin include:

• In October, 2016, Micah Jester, 26, was fatally shot by police after getting a call from her husband that she was in the throes of mental distress. Police said the woman repeatedly asked police to kill her while brandishing a weapon later determined to have been a BB gun. Police said no dashcam video of the incident was available and there were no witnesses other than police.
• In June 2016, a teenager said to be armed with both a gun and machete was shot by police in South Austin. Ray Barbosa Ojeda, 19, was said to have called police himself in alerting his presence along the 1000 block of Turtle Creek Boulevard before being shot by James Harvel, then assigned to the Special Operations unit. Police later modified their official statement to say that Ojeda was not armed with a gun at the time of his being shot, attributing the darkness during the 4 a.m. encounter for the earlier confusion.
• In another alleged "suicide by cop" incident in April 2016, Tyler Hunkin, 29, was fatally shot by Matthew Paredes, a four-year veteran of the police in South Austin. The APD said Hunkin was wielding not one but two knives before being shot.
• In February 2016, a black teenager was shot by police during what was believed to be a state of mental distress as the youth ran along a neighborhood without any clothes on. David Joseph, 17, died after Geoffrey Freeman said he failed to comply with his commands to stop. Freeman was subsequently fired from the force and the city agreed to a $3.25 million settlement with the dead teenager's family—the biggest such payout in the city's history.

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