Fort Worth police officer wounded; one suspect dead, another in custody

Star Telegram

FORT WORTH A police officer was critically wounded, one suspect killed and another suspect was in custody after “all hell broke loose” in west Fort Worth Tuesday afternoon.

The officer, who has been with the department since 2009, was shot multiple times during a gunfight in a wooded area and was transported by helicopter ambulance to John Peter Smith Hospital in Fort Worth.

“The officer is alive,” said Fort Worth Police Chief Joel Fitzgerald at a news conference. “We are happy for that.”

The suspect, Ed R. McIver Jr., 20, was apprehended about 6:15 p.m. Tuesday.

McIver’s father, Ed R. McIver, 42, was shot and killed at the scene.

Linda McIver, mother and grandmother to the suspects, said she last saw her grandson almost a month ago.

“I don’t believe that he shot the officer,” Linda McIver said. “My son? That’s possible, but not my grandson. If he’s armed, that means he took his dad’s gun. He’s not dangerous. He’s got a heart of gold.”

Officers were attempting to stop a vehicle occupied by the McIvers to serve a felony warrant on the father at Interstate 30 and Hulen Street, police said, but the vehicle sped off, leading officers on a pursuit that ended on Longvue Avenue, where the suspects fled from their car.

Officers pursued the suspects into a wooded area on foot and a gunfight ensued.

Fellow officers administered medical treatment to the wounded officer with a trauma kit on the scene before he was carried from the wooded area to be transported to JPS.

“He was was awake, alert and very vocal in the emergency room,” said an officer who had been briefed by Fitzgerald on the wounded officer’s condition. “That’s the fighting spirit we want to see.”

As the officer underwent treatment, police continued to scour the area near Longvue Avenue for the still at-large suspect.

Knight said with an officer shot, the suspect probably feels he has nothing to lose.

“This person is very dangerous,” Knight said.

Said Fitzgerald: “We want to make sure he is brought to justice.”

Chase started in Parker County

The chase began when a Parker County fugitive team observed the elder McIver in a vehicle at I-30 just west of downtown Fort Worth, said Parker County Sheriff Larry Fowler. The team includes agents from the U.S. Marshals, deputies from the Parker County Sheriff’s Office and Weatherford police.

“We had a stack of warrants on the suspect,” Fowler said.

The warrants for the elder McIver included warrants for assault, interference with an emergency call and two for skipping out on his bail.

The suspects spotted authorities near Central Market and drove away as Fort Worth police joined the pursuit, which went from Hulen to Vickery Boulevard and eventually onto westbound Interstate 20.

A woman and her mother said they saw two men in a light-blue, older model SUV speed by on the I-20 frontage road, followed by three waves of patrol cars.

Christina Robinson said she counted about 24 patrol cars as the suspects flew onto I-20.

“They must have been going 90 to 95 mph as they got on the freeway,” Robinson said. “I could tell there were two men but I could not tell much else. It looked like one man was bald.”

The pursuit ended on Longvue, in between Interstate 20 and I-30, just west of Loop 820 in west Fort Worth.

‘All hell broke loose’

A witness, who declined to give his name, described a chaotic and confusing scene.

“It looked like all hell broke loose,” the man said. “Cops came from everywhere. We saw them head south of Camp Bowie West. We thought maybe a bank had been robbed.”

An officer on the scene said the at-large suspect is believed to be armed with a rifle.

Streets in the area, including Longvue and Chapin Road, were blocked off.

Several passers-by stopped at the intersection to ask others what happened. One man who works at a nearby company said the area where the shooting occurred has several older rental homes and a wooded area.

Police searched a wooded area around Mary’s Creek, located south of Camp Bowie West.

Several patrons at nearby Randi’s Place watched television coverage of the incident at the bar, stunned that it was unfolding less than a mile from their bar stools.

“At first I thought there was a wreck, but then I thought, that’s too many police cars for a wreck,” a woman behind the bar said.

“Give yourself up”

Linda McIver said she had been at her Weatherford home Tuesday when she got a phone call alerting her to turn on the news. She said it was through news coverage that she learned about the shooting of the Fort Worth shooting and her son and grandson’s possible involvement.

“When that put my grandson’s picture up there, then we knew for sure,” McIver said.

Linda McIver said her son had moved away from Weatherford four to six months ago, though she didn’t know to where, adding that the mother and son were somewhat estranged.

“We just didn’t see eye to eye on a lot of things,” she said.

Linda McIver said she used to have a good relationship with her son, a father of five who remains married but separated from his third wife.

“We were all very close. We got together on the weekends about every other weekend. We’d go out to eat, come here and play cards or dominoes,” she said. “He did things with his children and wife. They were always going camping or doing things together.”

But after serving time in prison, Linda McIver said her son returned home a changed man.

“Once he came home, it was like none of that existed anymore.”

Tarrant County court records show the elder McIver had been sentenced to five years in prison on September 9, 2003, on felony convictions for aggravated assault of a public servant with a deadly weapon and evading arrest with a vehicle out of Tarrant County. He had been accused of displaying a gun and fleeing from a North Richland Hills police officer that March.

A few days after being sentenced to prison, he also also plead guilty to a misdemeanor charge of evading arrest for an encounter with Crowley police in October 2002 in exchange for a 120-day jail sentence.

“…He told me they would never take him back,” Linda McIver said. “That if he got in anymore trouble, that they would never take him back alive. I believed that with all my heart and soul.”

Linda McIver said she had last seen her grandson almost a month ago as he had been out of town working on a welding job.

She said she a Fort Worth negotiator called her house Tuesday afternoon, seeking the family’s assistance in locating her grandson who she as a “gentle and loving boy.”

She said if she could send a message to her grandson, she’d tell him: “Just give yourself up and … come home safe. We’ll go through this together like we always do.”

‘Continue to pray’

Fitzgerald was joined by Fort Worth Mayor Betsy Price at the JPS news conference.

“The officer is in excellent hands here at John Peter Smith,” Price said. “I would ask the citizens of Fort Worth to continue to pray.”

Fitzgerald, who became police chief in October, was somber as he addressed the media.

“We all know what we sign up for, but we don’t sign up for being shot,” Fitzgerald said.

Tuesday’s shooting is the second officer involved-shooting in Tarrant County in the past two weeks.

On March 1, Euless police officer David Hofer was fatally shot about 2:50 p.m. after he and two other officers responded to a report of shots being fired at J.A. Carr Park in Euless. The shooter, Jorge Brian Gonzalez, a 22-year-old drug addict who had been released from jail four hours earlier, was shot and killed by Euless police.

The same Air One helicopter that did a flyover at Hofer’s memorial service was in the air Tuesday searching for McIver.
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