FBI Joins Investigation Into Tacoma Officer's Shooting: UPDATES

TACOMA, WA - Tacoma Police are releasing new details about the overnight incident where an officer was shot and killed.

Early Thursday morning, Tacoma Police announced that the suspect, a 38-year-old man - identified by some news outlets as Bruce Randall Johnson II - was killed after an 11-hour standoff with police. The FBI joined the investigation Thursday to look into the circumstances surrounding the suspect's death.

The suspect had been barricaded inside a home here since the initial incident took place near 4 p.m. Wednesday. Police say the man was inside the home and using two children as protection. The children were identified as a 6-year-old boy and an 8-year-old girl. Police had entered the home Wednesday night to confront the suspect, but were not specifically aware there were children inside.

Tacoma Police Spokesperson Officer Loretta Cool said Thursday that the children were with the suspect for the duration of the standoff. Cool was asked about the suspect's frame of mind during the standoff, and whether the shooting might have been targeted at police.

"This was a person who had his own demons, and he displayed them in this fashion," Cool said. "Maybe he wasn't targeting police rather than [the officer] was the person that was there trying to help his family."

The officer was shot Wednesday near 5:30 p.m. while responding to a domestic violence call in the Eastside section of the city and died around 9:15 last night. A procession of more than 200 officers accompanied him while he was transported in an ambulance to the medical examiner's office.

Cool pointed out that Tacoma Police continued to respond to domestic violence calls during and after the Wednesday shooting, highlighting the frequency of such situations. A sad fact of the shooting: all four Tacoma officers killed over the past 30 years were responding to domestic violence calls.

The officer has not been identified by authorities, but reports indicate he was 45 years old and had joined the department in 1999. The officer was well known on the city's Eastside, and was described as calm and soft spoken when dealing with stressful situations.

Police and fire departments from across the region are in mourning now, and the officer's death has prompted condolences from across Puget Sound.

Cool said that she would try to give more details near 12:30 p.m. Thursday.

Many neighboring police agencies were assisting Tacoma Police, including Washington State Patrol and Lakewood Police.

We will update this story as more information becomes available.

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