St. Louis County Prosecutor Bob McCulloch on Friday charged 31-year-old Antonio Taylor with three felonies, including assault and weapons charges.
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Taylor is being held on $500,000 cash bond and is expected to be arraigned Monday morning. He has been on probation for stolen vehicle in Oklahoma and was then traced back for gun charge in California.
Police said the motive for the shooting is not known at this time, reported the Post-Dispatch. The unidentified officer was walking toward his vehicle when Taylor stepped out of his auto and fired three shots to his back, with one of them striking the officer.
The suspect fled on foot but was soon apprehended by other officers. He joined the Ballwin Police Department in 2014.
An officer shot during a traffic stop in a town near St. Louis, Missouri was described as kind-hearted, outgoing, and a “centerpiece” of the police department by friends and colleagues.
“Don’t get me wrong, everything he did was wrong”, he told ABC. “As far as this individual or what his motives are I don’t know”.
Lakeem Scott was wounded in a shootout with police early Thursday and remains hospitalized.
“You don’t have to hear me say it, that right now it’s a very hard time in law enforcement, and it has been for a long time”, Belmar said.
The officer was shot while walking to his vehicle to check the suspect’s driving status, after an initial conversation with the motorist he stopped for speeding. According to a post to on the St. Louis County Police Department’s Facebook page, the officer “was transported to a local hospital where he continues to receive life-saving treatment for injuries received in the attack”. While the officer was walking back to his squad auto to finish paper work, the driver who had been pulled over got out of the vehicle, “advanced quickly”, and fired multiple rounds.
The officer’s condition is unknown at this time and the suspect was not injured.
Those incidents include at least 11 ambushes, which is already more than the eight ambushes that took place in all of 2015.
The suspect was captured shortly afterwards and was taken into custody.
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Steve Stenger, a St. Louis County executive, wrote on Twitter, “Thank you to all agencies for quick response and investigation in Ballwin”. “Our thoughts and prayers are with the officer and his family”.
