DETROIT — Police killed a gunman during a shootout early Tuesday who was suspected of fatally shooting a woman over a child-custody issue and firing shots at a Detroit police station, authorities said.
Members of the department’s Special Response Team approached the 28-year-old man about 7 a.m. as he sat holding an AR-15 rifle in an SUV in a parking lot on the city’s east side, Chief James Craig said.
“As the officers said, ‘let me see your hands,’ he shook his head negative, Craig told reporters. “And there was an exchange of gunfire between this subject and several of the SRT officers.”
No officers were wounded in the shootout.
The man is believed to have killed the 28-year-old the mother of his child late Monday on Detroit’s west side, Craig said. Names of those involved weren’t immediately released, but a text from the man to her family read that he was going to kill her if his child was taken, Craig said.
About 5:15 a.m. Tuesday, the man drove to the 5th Police Precinct and fired four shots from a rifle at the building, Craig said. At least one shot penetrated bulletproof glass in a vestibule.
The man drove away and shot out the window of a police car before pulling into a parking lot, where the Special Response Team responded. Police were trying to determine why he went to the 5th Precinct.
No one was injured at the precinct, but an officer in the police car had cuts from broken glass, police said.
