A D.C. police officer shot and wounded a man on Good Hope Road in Southeast on Friday morning, after officers responded to the area for the report of a woman struck with a pipe, according to D.C. police. It happened just before 10 a.m., near the intersection of Good Hope Road and 13th Street SE, D.C. Police Chief Robert Contee said during a news conference. The man shot by the officer was taken to the hospital and is conscious and breathing, Contee said. The officer was not injured. The woman who was struck with the pipe was treated by paramedics and was being interviewed by officers, Contee said. The police chief said the officer was canvassing the area on foot after the report of the pipe assault, when he saw a man “abruptly” get into the passenger side of a burgundy Jeep. “The officer attempts to make a stop of that person, asks the person to step out of the vehicle … He did not get out the car,” Contee said. “The officer is asking the person to get out of the car, saying, ‘This is just a stop.’ At some point during the course of this interaction, when the officer’s saying, ‘Stop reaching, stop reaching, stop reaching,’ a shot is fired and the person is struck.”
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Police are still investigating the moments leading up to the shooting. As officers pulled the man out of the car and handcuffed him, Contee said the driver, an unidentified woman, drove off. “She said, ‘Just get out of the car.’ And then she drove off after the shooting occurred,” Contee said. He urged the woman to come forward, saying police need to talk to her to understand what happened before the shooting. “I’m pleading — we really need to talk to you to really put the rest of the pieces together as to what happened,” Contee said. He said the Jeep is missing the hubcap in the back. Contee said it’s too early to say whether the officer’s actions were justified. “I mean, it was a stop; the person was noncompliant.” Contee reviewed camera footage of the encounter and said the video showed that the man kept turning in his seat and that “his hands go up” when the officer commanded him to get out of the car. “It’s a lot that’s going on, what’s not happening is he’s not getting out of the vehicle,” Contee said. Police did not recover any weapons from the man, but he said there was a “large quantity” of drugs on him. This is a developing story. WTOP reporter Nick Iannelli is on the scene.
