Eleven Boston Cops Wounded, Two Critically, by Body Armor Wearing Suspect

Details

Category: Crime

Published on Thursday, 13 October 2016 08:04

Written by Janet Walker

Boston police officers shot and killed a gunman after he opened fire on responding officers wounding eleven and critically injuring two who are now fighting for their lives, in what has been called a domestic disturbance gone bad.

The firefight contained to Gladstone Street, on Boston's East Side, began Wednesday evening around 11:00PM, when a 9-11 call was placed in a domestic disturbance between two male roommates.

When police arrived on the scene the two responding officers, both veterans of the force with a combined experience of more than forty years, were ambushed by one of the roommates firing multiple rounds upon the officers.

The two were dying in the hallway of the building when backup arrived and stormed the unit, dragging the two wounded officers to safety while exchanging a hail of gunfire with the suspect who was using an assault rifle capable of 900 rounds per minute.

 "The two officers are in extremely critical conditions at mass general," said Boston Police Commissioner Bill Evans who arrived at the Gladstone street scene for a press bulletin and indicated Massachusetts General, where the two critically wounded officers were in surgery, would be the staging ground for any press conferences.

 "I'm extremely proud of the officers who pulled their fellow officers to safety, applying tourniquets on the wounds and one even applied pressure with his hands on the wounds to stabilize the injury," the Commissioner added.

Nine of the responding officers were also wounded in the effort to neutralize the scene. Those officers, this morning, were undergoing treatment at Tufts Medical Center.

The commissioner also confirmed the suspect was deceased in the home and he was wearing a ballistics vest. No additional information on the suspect is available. There are no links to radical terror or extremism or larger mass casualty planned action. No additional information as to the suspects motive.

The East Boston section of the city is not part of the mandatory body camera program recently initiated and it is doubtful that a video account of the events will be available.

Local residents were stunned by the hail of gunfire and the swarm of police presence and told to shelter in place, a term and corresponding response familiar to Bostonians who first became familiar with the mandate during the hunt for Boston Marathon Bomber Dzhokhar Tsarnaev.