Fort Pierce police Sunday fatally shoot man armed with Taser, wound officer with gunfire
FORT PIERCE — A day after Fort Pierce police reported fatally shooting a man Sunday during an armed burglary at a Hutchinson Island condominium, officials said the man killed was armed with a Taser weapon and an officer wounded by gunfire was struck by a bullet fired by a fellow city officer.
The incident began Sunday around 6 a.m. when three officers responded to a 911 call of a burglary in progress in the 1100 block of Bayshore Drive, police stated Monday.
Officers were told a man was inside a residence “armed with a 9 mm handgun,” Fort Pierce officials said in a news release issued Monday.
Officers noted that the door was ajar, pushed it open, and announced themselves, police said.
After several announcements, a man, identified Monday as David Taylor, 62, “appeared within the officer’s sight and pointed a weapon at the officers,” officials stated.
“The officers engaged and were forced to fire their weapons,” Fort Pierce Police said.
Taylor was transported to HCA Florida Lawnwood Hospital where he later died of his injuries.
There was one additional person inside the residence at the time of the incident.
According to Fort Pierce police, after the shooting incident, officials determined the weapon pointed at city officers “while matching the description of the weapon, was in fact a Taser.”
“Further investigation indicates that the injury to the officer was the result of another officer’s actions while attempting to subdue the threat,” police officials stated.
The unidentified officer sustained a nonlife-threatening injury to his arm and is expected to make a full recovery.
The Florida Department of Law Enforcement will handle the incident investigation, as it does all police-involved shootings. The officers involved have been placed on administrative leave, also standard procedure.
State Attorney’s Office ‘parallel’ investigation
The State Attorney’s Office too, has launched its own investigation into Sunday’s deadly police-involved shooting, a prosecutor said Monday.
It’s the second time since May that state prosecutors and FDLE have been called in to investigate the deadly use-of-force involving Fort Pierce police.
On May 18, Bernard Smith, 28, was killed by Fort Pierce officers following a shooting spree just after 11 a.m. in the area of North 24th Street and Avenue M that left two other people dead and a third seriously wounded.
Smith was killed in an exchange with Fort Pierce police responding to a series of 911 calls about a shooting victim in the area. Police at the time said officers found Smith in the 1600 block of North 25th Street near Avenue P and exchanged gunfire.
Police found two more shooting victims in homes in the 1600 block of Northwest 24th Street and in the 2400 block of Avenue P who later died of their injuries.
Reached Monday, Chief Assistant State Attorney Steve Gosnell said just like the May incident, the state had their own prosecutors and investigators at the scene following the deadly incident.
“FDLE are the lead investigators of this case, so we will be working in conjunction with them. We conduct a separate and parallel investigation on the Fort Pierce incident,” he said. “Down the road we will present the facts of the deadly use-of-force by Fort Pierce officer or officers to a grand jury.”
A St. Lucie County grand jury will determine whether or not the officer was justified in using the deadly force that resulted in the death of a resident here in St. Lucie County.”
That’s standard, he said, for the State Attorney’s Office in the 19th Judicial Circuit, which covers Martin, Okeechobee, St. Lucie and Indian River counties, to have a grand jury review the actions of law enforcement officers when deadly force is used to “determine whether or not the officer should be charged criminally or not.”
The investigations will take several months to complete, Gosnell said.
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Melissa E. Holsman is the legal affairs reporter for TCPalm and Treasure Coast Newspapers and is writer and co-host of "Uncertain Terms," a true-crime podcast. Reach her at melissa.holsman@tcpalm.com. If you are a subscriber, thank you. If not, become a subscriber to get the latest local news on the Treasure Coast.
This article originally appeared on Treasure Coast Newspapers: Fort Pierce police Sunday kill man armed with taser, officer injured
