Officer-involved shooting in Superior
SUPERIOR – The carnival atmosphere of the 2015 Mineral County Fair and Rodeo was shattered by the sounds of gunfire Friday night after a Mineral County Sheriff’s deputy opened fire and killed a suspect directly across the street from the rodeo arena.
Details and the circumstances of the shooting are unknown at this time and as soon as they become available the information will be updated. All that is known at this point is that sometime around 9 p.m., shots were fired at a vehicle by an MCSO deputy. The shots were heard by some members of the public at the rodeo and on the west end of the fairgrounds.
A white pickup truck could be seen in an alley on Pennsylvania Ave. between 5th Ave. E. and 6th Ave. E. which appeared to have crashed into a trailer and a fence post. Behind yellow police tape, an orange towel could be seen draped over the driver’s side of the vehicle obscuring the body of the suspect from view of the public eye.
MCSO vehicles closed the section of Pennsylvania Ave. in front of the fairgrounds as deputies and an investigator examined and took pictures of the scene. More details will be added as soon as they become available.
Updated Saturday Aug. 8 at 6:00 p.m.
Mineral County Sheriff Tom Bauer had the following statement regarding the shooting of a suspect by a deputy of the MCSO.
“A Mineral County deputy was involved in the shooting of an individual. The individual attempted to hit him by swerving his vehicle at him. That’s why he fired and killed the individual, a white adult male. As soon as I got here, I looked at the situation and called the Division of Criminal Investigation to come in and investigate. The one thing I want to stress is the public was never in any danger. No one else was hurt. The deputy wasn’t hurt. There were several hundred people enjoying the fair at the time and this could have been really ugly. I have to praise my deputy for doing what he did. It was a tough call but he had to do it especially when the individual was trying to kill him. The deputy gave him commands to stop and he tried to swerve at him and that’s why he fired.”
Bauer said the incident began with a call to dispatch about a disturbance further west down the alley where the individual came to a stop and was met by the MCSO deputy. Bauer said when the deputy met with the individuals who reported the disturbance they identified the individual in the white SUV as a person of interest.
(The vehicle was described in an earlier report as a white pickup truck but was actually a white SUV.)
When the MCSO deputy approached the vehicle, Bauer said his officer noticed the individual was “extremely intoxicated.” The deputy ordered the individual to stop the vehicle but the suspect instead drove at a high rate of speed down the alley and eventually crashed into the trailer and a fence post.
Bauer said the identity of the deceased suspect will be released following a coroner report and DCI investigation but that information could become available as soon as Monday, Aug. 10. He did say the vehicle did have Montana plates and was registered in Mineral County but it was not immediately known if the vehicle was registered to the deceased individual.
The deputy involved in the shooting is currently on paid administrative leave as per standard procedure following an officer-involved shooting and pending the investigation. Bauer said the actions of the MCSO deputy avoided a potentially much more dangerous situation considering the direction the vehicle was travelling and the close proximity of the incident to the Mineral County Fair and Rodeo.
“I can’t praise the officer enough for doing what he did,” Bauer said. “He kept the vehicle from potentially going through the fence and into the crowd.”