Monday, August 22, 2016
CINCINNATI (AP) — A police officer fatally shot a suspect who was holding a knife to a pharmacist’s throat in a southwest Ohio drugstore, a police chief said Monday.
Hamilton Police Chief Craig Bucheit said officers responded about 2:30 a.m. today to 911 calls about someone jumping over a counter in the pharmacy area of a Walgreens store in the city about 30 miles north of Cincinnati.
“Dude hopped the counter,” a man told a dispatcher in one of the calls. He said he couldn’t tell if the person was armed and he wasn’t sure what was going on, but he added that “it looks a little suspect.”
Two officers arrived to find a suspect holding the pharmacist “hostage with a knife at her throat,” Bucheit said. The chief says the suspect didn’t comply with police commands and was fatally shot by one of the officers after a brief confrontation.
The pharmacist was “shook up,” but wasn’t injured, and neither of the officers was injured, the chief said.
A police report says the suspect used a knife to force the pharmacist to take money from “the cash drawer.”
Police were still trying to identify the suspect, who was believed to be a man in his 20s, Bucheit said.