A police officer is recovering after being shot during a firefight with an armed man outside a Southeast D.C. apartment building on Monday night, ending with the suspect’s death.
D.C. police responded to reports of gunfire in a Savannah Terrace apartment block around 7 p.m. Monday. When they arrived, an armed man emerged shooting from the building, hitting one officer before police returned fire and killed him.
The officer was released Tuesday morning from a hospital after receiving treatment for injuries deemed not life-threatening. Tuesday afternoon, the police identified the suspect who was killed as Eric Carter, 53, of Southeast, and said he shot and killed his brother, Alphonzo Carter, 55, of Southeast, who was found in an apartment after the incident was over and had been taken to a hospital in critical condition.
D.C. Police Chief Peter Newsham said a bulletproof vest may have saved the officer’s life.
“It sounds like the round struck the officer in the vest,” Newsham said, awaiting further updates on the officer’s condition.
“The first thought when you get a call like this is hopefully, when you have a police officer out here doing his job, that he’s not seriously injured. So when we got news from the hospital that it’s a non-life threatening injury, it made us all feel a lot better.”
Newsham said officers declared a barricade situation following the shooting, as it remained unclear whether any additional threats were present inside the building. An emergency response team was called in to secure the area. No other suspects were found.
Chief Newsham provides updates in reference to the officer shot in the 2200 block of Savannah Terrace, Southeast https://t.co/PUtm1llL7w
— DC Police Department (@DCPoliceDept) September 17, 2019
Answering questions from news media on Monday night, Newsham asserted that officers shot the suspect in self-defense.
“We never feel good when we have to use force against anybody in our community,” Newsham said. “If somebody comes out and shoots at one of our police officers, unfortunately, they have to defend themselves, and it sounds like that was the case here.”
