FEDERAL WAY, Wash. – Police are investigating after a shooting involving a Des Moines Police officer occurred on Saturday afternoon.
"I was very scared, I'm still nervous right now," said Antonio Paz, who was at the nearby Revolution Cafe when the shooting occurred in the same shopping center. "It was like four or five shots, and i didn't know where the shots came from."
The shooting happened just after 3pm Saturday near the intersection of S 272nd Street and Pacific Highway South.
But the incident actually began about three blocks away with a domestic violence call at a home in the 27000 block of 15th Ave S. A 47-year old woman and other witnesses there told police the woman's boyfriend, who lives with her, assaulted her with a gun.
"He had pointed a handgun at her and had actually left on foot before the officers actually arrived," said Commander Stan McCall with Federal Way Police.
Two Des Moines officers found the man, described as a 40-year old Filipino male in the strip mall south of S 272nd Street, across city lines, said investigators. They confronted him, ordering him to the ground, but the man refused to comply, McCall said.
"They knew he was possibly armed, and in fact he pulled a firearm and pointed it at them, and they fired," said McCall.
The man died at the scene. The two officers were not injured.
The King County medical examiner will perform an autopsy and officially identify the man. The two Des Moines officers are being put on paid administrative leave, while a separate agency, Federal Way Police, conducts the investigation. McCall said part of the investigation will determing if the suspect fired first, or at all, and if one or both officers discharged their weapons.
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