BATON ROUGE — Internal Affairs is investigating two separate officer-involved shootings with BRPD that happened Sunday night and Tuesday morning, one of which was deadly. BRPD Chief T.J. Morse says no officers or K9 units were injured in either incident.
The most recent happened Tuesday morning after 7:30 a.m. on Titian Ave. inside a unit at the Plaza Apartments. The deadly shooting happened after SWAT officers and K9 units were negotiating with a wanted suspect for over four hours, Chief Morse told UWK.
“Last night before midnight, we responded to a suspect that had stabbed an elderly man, a 70-something-year-old, nearly 20 times and stole his car. Our officers found the suspect driving the car an hour or so later and got in a lengthy vehicle pursuit with him. The guy bailed out the car, ran inside an abandoned apartment complex over on Titian, in Mall City, ran in there, barricaded himself inside and so they called out SWAT,” Chief Morse explained.
The original scene started in the 7200 block of Winthrop Ave. where a 33-year-old man, identified as Devin Morris, allegedly stabbed a 71-year-old man upwards of 20 times in a domestic stabbing. Morris then stole the elderly man’s vehicle. Around 3 a.m. on Sept. 8, officers started negotiating with the suspect after he barricaded himself. They also deployed tear gas and K9 units, as well as their drone.
“The suspect disabled the drone when it was inside, refused to come out. He said, ‘I’m coming out. I’m not coming out. I’m coming out. I am not coming out.’ So they sent in the dog and we went in there to get him. Suspect was fighting with the dogs, fighting with officers, and they ultimately had to shoot him,” the chief said. He added he does believe it was a justified shooting, given he personally knows the training the SWAT team must go through having spent 17 years in SWAT himself.
The man did die. His name has not been released at this time.
On Sunday evening around 5:45, BRPD officers responded to another apartment complex at 750 Harding Blvd. for a man with a rifle, threatening to shoot children and people at the pool if they did not quiet down, per the chief, who says he has watched the body-camera footage of the incident.
“Two officers go up the stairs to contact him. He’s sitting in a chair in front of an apartment with an open door. He’s got a handgun in his lap. They’re saying, ‘Hey, let me see your hands! Put your hands up! Don’t touch the gun! Don’t touch the gun!’ He grabs the gun. They say, ‘Drop the gun! Drop the gun! Drop the gun!’ He stands up, aggressive, threatening them. So the officer that was in the front with a rifle shoots one time & hits him in the hip area,” Chief Morse told UWK.
The man has been identified as Johnny Bradley. He fell into the apartment after he was shot, BRPD said, which is when officers moved in, removed the gun, rendered aid and took the man into custody. He had a non-life threatening injury from the gunshot wound to the leg area.
Per standard procedure, all the officers involved in both scenes are currently on leave pending the outcome of two investigations: one from internal affairs and another from the homicide detectives. That leave also allows officers a mental break, Chief Morse said.
“I know what our guys do and what they train for and what I think we’ve seen just in two isolated incidents here over the past three days is just that training playing out, and them being able to react to deadly force situations and do so professionally and take care of what they had to take care of to protect their lives and the lives of other people. I’m proud of the work that our men and women do every day, and definitely proud of what these officers had to do in life-threatening situations in both of these incidents,” Chief Morse said.
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