Armed man attacking Tacoma’s ICE detention center killed in officer-involved shooting
Armed man attacking Tacoma’s ICE detention center killed in officer-involved shooting
July 13, 2019 at 10:01 am Updated July 13, 2019 at 1:56 pm
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1 of 2 | Officer Sam Lopez turns away would-be protesters in front of a road block near the Northwest Detention Center on Saturday... (Rebekah Welch / The Seattle Times) More
Tacoma police said they shot at an armed man early Saturday who was attacking the Northwest Detention Center, the holding facility in Tacoma for federal Immigration and Customs Enforcement. The man died at the scene.
Around 4 a.m., officers responded to an ICE employee’s report of a man armed with a rifle and throwing homemade incendiaries at the building and vehicles in the detention center’s parking lot, as well as attempting to ignite a propane tank, according to Tacoma police. Officers say they saw the man wearing a satchel and holding flares, as well as the rifle.
Officers reported “shots fired,” police spokeswoman Loretta Cool said, at which point the officers had fired; she did not know whether the man also fired.
Officers retreated to cover, uninjured. After medical aid arrived, officers approached the man and determined that he had been shot and killed. It is unclear whether the man was shot by officers or shot himself, Cool said. All four involved officers fired their weapons, she said.
Detectives and forensics were processing the scene Saturday morning; the man’s name has not been released. “I don’t even think at this point in time he’s been identified,” Cool said.
The four male officers involved — whose tenure with Tacoma police ranged from 20 years to 9 months — were placed on paid administrative leave per department policy. Their names won’t be released until further along in the investigation, according to Cool.
A spokeswoman for ICE, Tanya Roman, confirmed the shooting incident, and said no ICE employees were hurt nor involved. She referred questions to Tacoma police.
The shooting comes the day before Sunday’s planned national raid by ICE targeting hundreds of immigrants who have received deportation orders. The raid has sparked fears in the 10 cities targeted for enforcement; Seattle is not among them.
Activist group La Resistencia — also known as NWDC Resistance, after Northwest Detention Center — had initially planned a protest of the facility for Saturday afternoon, but postponed the event by a day after reporting road closures around the center and a 24-hour lock-down of the facility itself.
Maru Mora-Villalpando, an activist with La Resistancia, said the coalition was notified of the incident after the fact, but detainees at the facility, including one that she spoke with, have been left in the dark.
“They were not told that visits would not happen, were not told that the accident happened in the early morning. People in detention always are the last ones to know what’s happening outside,” Mora-Villalpando said.
La Resistencia has also recently dealt with three cases of medical neglect, she added, one of which ended in deportation and then death. “The conditions are getting really, really bad,” Mora-Villalpando said.
A spokesperson for the GEO Group, the private prison company that operates the Tacoma detention center, said that the company’s facilities have never been overcrowded or housed unaccompanied minors, the issue that has sparked national protests.
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