A police officer who stopped to help a man who appeared to have been shot was ambushed and killed by the man Thursday in Minneapolis, according to The Star Tribune.
Officer Jamal Mitchell was responding to a call of “shots fired” when he stopped at another apparent crime scene a couple of blocks from the address of the original call. When he got out of his cruiser to help the man, the man instead shot and killed Mitchell, authorities said.
Between the two crime scenes, three people were killed, two others hospitalized in critical condition and another officer and a firefighter suffered less serious injuries.
“I’ve seen the video, and he was ambushed,” Minnesota Bureau of Criminal Apprehension Superintendent Drew Evans said at an evening news conference. “I’m using the term for a reason.”
According to police, officers were called to a double shooting at an apartment complex in the south Minneapolis neighborhood of Whittier. As Mitchell was responding, he noticed individuals who appeared to be injured about two blocks from the apartment shooting scene, The Associated Press reported.
Mitchell got out of his car to provide aid to one man, who wound up shooting the officer.
Another second officer came up on the scene and exchanged gunfire with the shooter, who died despite life-saving efforts on the part of officers, Minneapolis Assistant Police Chief Katie Blackwell said.
That officer had non-life-threatening wounds.
Another person, believed to be an innocent bystander, according to AP, was shot and taken to a hospital in critical condition. A firefighter also was shot and injured.
When other officers went to the apartment, they found two people inside who had been shot. One was dead and the other was hospitalized in critical condition, Evans said.
Evans said he believed the shooting was isolated to the two locations and that the people in the apartment “had some level of acquaintance with each other.”
Police said they are unsure of any connection between the two shooting scenes, though and investigation is ongoing, according to the Star-Tribune.
Mitchell had been with the department about 18 months, and was hailed as a hero when on his third day on duty, he saved the lives of two people in a house fire.
He was a father who was engaged to be married.
According to AP, the shooting comes three months after two officers and a firefighter-paramedic in the Minneapolis suburb of Burnsville were killed while responding to a domestic violence call.