WINTER HAVEN, Fla. — A man suspected in a mass shooting in central Florida last month was fatally shot by a police officer following a long chase and a carjacking, authorities said.
The car driven by Alex Greene, 21, eventually crashed into a business in Winter Haven. That’s a short distance from Lakeland, where 11 people were injured in the Jan. 30 shooting, Lakeland Police Chief Sammy Taylor said.
“We are very confident he was in fact involved; to what extent we don’t know yet,” Taylor said.
Taylor said detectives had hoped to bring Greene in on an outstanding burglary warrant to talk to him about the shooting on Jan. 30 in a neighborhood near downtown Lakeland, about 30 miles east of Tampa.
As investigators from the Lakeland Police Department, the federal Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives, and the Florida Department of Law Enforcement conducted surveillance, Greene got into a pickup truck and started to drive away, Polk County Sheriff Grady Judd said during a news conference.
Lakeland police went in pursuit along a heavily traveled road.
Police Capt. Eric Harper was driving an unmarked vehicle and tried to stop Greene “so that we don’t have this pursuit on a very busy road,” Judd said.
He did a successful pit maneuver, and Greene got out of the vehicle and started running into traffic.
“Why he and the captain weren’t run over is just the grace of God, because traffic was all over the place,” Judd said.
When Greene realized he couldn’t get away, he ran toward a restaurant where a woman was standing outside her car with the doors open, Judd said. The woman saw Greene, slammed the passenger door and tried to shut the driver’s side door.
Greene pushed the woman away and got into the car, Judd said. Harper approached with his gun drawn, yelling commands for Greene to stop and show his hands, police said in a news release Tuesday.
“Captain Harper was also loudly identifying himself as a police officer,” according to the…
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