A 19-year-old serial criminal known to police in the St. Louis area has been identified as the suspect who ambushed a St. Louis police sergeant, and who was later shot and killed in a shootout with police.
A man accused of shooting a St. Louis City police sergeant Sunday night in an ‘ambush’ attack was killed in a shootout overnight, according to St. Louis Police Chief Sam Dotson.
Sources identified the 19-year-old suspect fatally shot early Monday morning as George Bush III, of the 7000 block of Lansdown Avenue in St. Louis.
The 46-year-old sergeant was inside his vehicle at a stop light near Hampton and Pernod when he was shot twice in the face around 7 p.m. According to Chief Dotson, Bush III pulled up next to the officer and fired two shots into the squad car, shattering the glass window.
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Just after midnight, police tracked the suspect, who was inside the woman’s vehicle, in the area of Smiley and Leola in south St. Louis.
When police pulled behind the vehicle, the woman pulled over, at which time the suspect got out and ran through an alley, then a yard and onto Smiley. While running, the suspect spotted an unmarked police car with two officers inside and fired a gunshot, striking the windshield, police said. The officers were hit by flying glass, but did not sustain any significant injuries.
After firing the gunshot, responding officers approached the area and the suspect fired more shots. According to police, the responding officers, one of which was assigned to the FBI Task Force, returned fire, striking the suspect.
Police said they knew Bush by name and believe he could be connected to several robberies, possibly a carjacking and homicide, from St. Louis City to St. Louis County.
“What we believe is that individual was responsible for a series of crimes that have occurred over the last couple of days here in St. Louis City and St. Louis County, and when he saw the officer he became concerned that he would be recognized,” Dotson said.
A gun was recovered from the suspect following the shootout.
“We did recover at the scene a pistol with a high capacity magazine, an extended magazine and we believe he had additional magazines, additional bullets to be able to put in that gun to shot at somebody,” Dotson said.
Bush was one of three criminals who ambushed police officers yesterday. A suspect who murdered a San Antonio (TX) police detective is still on the run, while a man who mildly injured an officer in an ambush on Sanibel Island (FL) was shot and taken into custody.
A fourth officer was shot while struggling with a suspect after a foot chase following a traffic stop in Kansas City, Missouri, last night. The 18-year-old suspect was killed in the encounter, and a gun was recovered at the scene.
President Barack Obama, long sympathetic to the domestic terrorist group Black Lives Matter thought to be the inspiration for more than a dozen attempts to murder police officers in the past few months, remained characteristically quite, and did not address the three attempted assassinations of officers.
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