Rochester Police are releasing some more details about an incident early Monday morning when a police sniper ended up shooting and killing a man who threatened people, including officers, with a shotgun.
It happened in the 3700 block of Lake Avenue, near Denise Road. Chief Michael Ciminelli says police initially got a call about a man threatening other people in a building there with a shotgun. He says crisis negotiators and the SWAT team were called in, and police tried to resolve the situation peacefully.
But he says at one point, the suspect fired at least two shots, and then just before 9:00 a.m., Ciminelli says the man pointed his gun at SWAT officers and that's when a police sniper filed a single shot, killing the man.
The chief says this was a very dangerous situation.
"It's important that we can contain the situation because if that subject gets outside the building with a gun, we're just a few blocks away from the library, we're close to Holy Cross School, it's a residential neighborhood, so it's very important that we conduct ourselves in a way to mitigate the risk to everybody that's in the area."
Exact details about what led up to the shooting are still under investigation, but Ciminelli says it started with some kind of dispute and also involved numerous threats from the suspect about shooting police officers.
Ciminelli says the police sniper, a seven year veteran, was put on administrative duty while an internal investigation continues, which is standard procedure.
No names have been released yet.
