DALLAS (US), June 11: A police officer has shot and wounded a man outside a Dallas airport after the man attacked a woman believed to be the mother of his children and then threatened the officer with large rocks, police said.
Police Chief David Brown said Shawn Nicholas Diamond of Edgewood, Maryland, advanced menacingly with a rock in each hand toward an officer who had his gun drawn outside the Dallas Love Field terminal yesterday, telling the officer, “You’re going to have to shoot.”
Diamond was in stable condition at a Dallas hospital, Brown said at a news conference.
The chief said Diamond’s ex-girlfriend was driving him to the airport for a flight home when he hit her.
After arriving at the airport terminal, he said, Diamond was pulling his luggage from the woman’s car when he grabbed a traffic cone, smashed the car’s windshield with it, then began picking up large landscaping rocks nearby and hurling them through the car’s windows.
Silent surveillance video showed a police officer intervening and aiming his handgun at Diamond when he began advancing menacingly with a rock in each hand. When Diamond darted around the officer, the officer shot him and ordered him to stay down, Brown said.
The officer fired several more shots when Diamond got up and began running. Another officer is seen on the video brandishing a stun gun but apparently never fired it.
The officer who shot Diamond has been removed from patrol duty pending an internal review of the shooting, Brown said. However, “the video is pretty telling,” the chief said.
Diamond had left his job in Maryland on Monday and flown to Dallas to visit his ex-girlfriend. He was arrested Thursday in the Dallas suburb of Carrollton and charged with criminal mischief after destroying city-owned trees valued at USD 3,700 by driving recklessly, Carrollton police spokeswoman Jolene DeVito said. Diamond was booked into Denton County Jail and released on bond yesterday.
A video posted by Instagram user @flashyfilms and credited to Bryan Armstrong also shows the commotion on the curb outside baggage claim at Dallas Love Field.
Amid the sound of nine gunshots and an officer’s shouts to “get down,” some people scramble while others stand watching before officers order them back inside. Toward the end of the video, one officer is seen pointing his gun at someone near the glass exterior of the airport.
Officials said one bullet hit an exterior glass wall and the rest hit the suspect. Dallas police Sgt Mike Beattie, who is stationed at Love Field, says that the bullet that hit the glass wall outside the airport’s baggage claim area didn’t penetrate it because of the protective film.
One officer at the scene, who would not be named, said he was told that the victim “absorbed” all the other bullets. (AGENCIES)
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