STUART, Ia. — Four people, including three law enforcement personnel, were injured after an attempt to serve an arrest warrant led to gunfire at a central Iowa apartment building.
Three Guthrie County sheriff’s deputies and a Stuart police officer went to 615 SW Seventh St., Apt. 1, in Stuart at 10:40 p.m. to deliver a warrant, said Adam DeCamp, special agent in charge with the Iowa Division of Criminal Investigation.
Within moments, at about 10:43 p.m, someone inside the residence began firing a handgun at the officers, DeCamp said. Two deputies were struck by gunfire. A third was injured with a “non-gunshot wound,” DeCamp said. One of the occupants of the home was injured by gunfire, as well.
Officials could not say exactly how many people were in the home.
“It’s tough,” Stuart Police Chief David Reha said at an early-morning news conference Friday. “We’re all small agencies, we work together all the time. This hurts all of us.”
“But they’re doing well,” added Jeremy Bennett, Guthrie County’s chief deputy, referring to his colleagues. “We had good backup and we want to thank all the other agencies that showed up to support us today. We had quite the outpouring of officers.”
Vehicles and officers from several county and local agencies could be seen near the apartment complex as investigators processed the scene in Stuart, a city of about 1,600 people nearly 40 miles west of Des Moines. It was unclear if any gunfire exited the home.
“There was shots fired inside the home,” DeCamp said during a 5 a.m. news conference at Stuart City Hall. “I don’t know if there were any fired outside.”
All of those hurt were taken to Des Moines-area hospitals with non-life-threatening injuries. A spokesman for MercyOne Medical Center said the deputies and police officer were being treated there.
“Law enforcement officers from local, county and state agencies in the area responded and were able to secure the scene without further incident,” DeCamp said. “Officers negotiated with one of the occupants of the apartments, getting him to leave the apartment and surrender.”
Guthrie County sheriff’s deputies are issued body cameras, Bennett said, but it’s unclear if they were on or working Thursday night.
Neither the subject of the arrest warrant nor the officers involved have been identified. DeCamp said he expects the suspect, who has been arrested, to be named within the next day.
As of 5 a.m., six agents were still on the streets interviewing witnesses to ensure officials had the best information possible, DeCamp said. As a precaution, several tenants of the apartment building were asked to leave their homes. People were being let back in after the incident ended, about midnight Thursday.
The apartment building was the same one where an alleged rape took place Monday, according to Reha. He said the officer-involved shooting and the potential sexual assault are not related, to his knowledge. The public is no longer at risk, the police chief said.
The standoff lasted nearly 90 minutes. DeCamp said he wasn’t sure why the warrant was being served so late in the evening, but it’s not necessarily odd.
“This is what law enforcement officers face on a daily basis; they don’t know what’s on the other side of the door, they don’t know what anyone else’s intentions are,” DeCamp said. “They’re forced to make a split-second decision and these officers in an effort to protect their community and do what they thought was right, were ultimately shot in the line of duty.
“It happens across the county, it happens in Iowa. We like the community to be aware of that and understand the situation that these law enforcement officers are in.”
Original story:
STUART, Ia. — Two Guthrie County sheriff’s deputies were shot as they attempted to serve a search warrant here Thursday night, a Guthrie County dispatcher said early Friday morning.
By 1 a.m. Friday, an apparent standoff at the Summit Street Apartments, on the southwest corner of town, had been resolved, officials said. At least one person was in custody. The Guthrie County dispatcher said the deputies are believed to be in stable condition.
MercyOne Des Moines Medical Center spokesman Gregg Lagan said early Friday that three law enforcement officers were being treated at the Des Moines hospital. WHO-HD reported online that, besides the deputies, one police officer was injured in an unspecified manner.
For about an hour late on Thursday and early Friday, at least one armed person had reportedly been barricaded inside an apartment as officials worked to set up a perimeter around the apartments, according to the Perry News.
Stuart is a city of about 1,600 people nearly 40 miles west of Des Moines.
Emergency dispatch recordings from just before 11 p.m. Thursday include an unidentified man, presumably a law enforcement officer, describing exchanges of gunfire at the apartment building.
“We have exchanged multiple rounds” with a person inside the apartment, he says. “We need to get more people here as soon as possible. This is going to be a SWAT situation for sure.”
A couple of minutes later, after conversing with a dispatcher about more help headed to the scene, the man says, “All I saw was the gun and muzzle flashes. It was literally inches from my face.”
with their thuggish behavior , this will become a common event … people are woke to their murdering tenancies and the only way you have a chance at coming out of it alive is to stand your ground
they created this