War On Police: Austin Woman Killed in Officer-Involved Shooting After Attacking Cops With Knife

A 25-year old woman who tried to run over three Austin police officers responding to a 911 call was shot dead by one of the officers as she later attacked them with a knife Wednesday night, Austin police chief Brian Manley said in a media briefing Wednesday night, Austin American-Statesman reported.

The woman was not immediately identified by the police. No officers were injured during the shooting, Manley said.

At 6:58 p.m. EST, the police received a call in which the caller did not say anything and hung up. However, there was another call from the same address two minutes later, and dispatchers heard someone in the background talking about “trying to blow up the house,” , Manley said.

About eight minutes later, when two officers drove to the address and walked toward the house, their dashboard camera indicated that a white car quickly backed out of the driveway and came directly toward them. In self-defense, the officers jumped onto the lawn to avoid getting hit by the vehicle.

The driver tried to run over another officer — the one who ultimately shot her — who was trying to set up spikes on the road to stop the vehicle. Soon after, the car crashed into a telephone pole and came to a stop.

After getting out of the car the woman tried to attack the three officers with a knife. Despite being warned several times by the officers to drop the knife, she did not do so and was ultimately shot dead when one of the officers felt his life was in danger. Manley said police were investigating the number of times the woman was shot.

The officer who shot the woman has been with the Austin Police Department for four years and will be on administrative leave while the department’s Internal Affairs office and the Travis County district attorney’s office investigate the shooting, as per Austin police protocol, Manley said.

The increasing attacks on officers-in-duty have raised concerns over their safety. On an average, one law enforcement officer is killed in the line of duty somewhere in the U.S. every 61 hours. Law enforcement fatalities nationwide rose to their highest level in five years in 2016, with 135 officers killed in the line of duty, according to preliminary data compiled and released by the National Law Enforcement Officers Memorial Fund (NLEOMF) in their 2016 Law Enforcement Fatalities Report. The 135 officer fatalities in 2016 is a 10 percent increase over the 123 who died in the line of duty last year and is the highest total since 2011 when 177 officers died while doing their jobs.