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Suspect in St. Louis police officer ambush killed in shootout

People started a blue ribbon chain at St. Gabriel the Archangel Church near Francis Park to honor a police sergeant shot Nov. 20. The ribbon extended to Pernod and Hampton, where the shooting occurred.
Jason Rosenbaum | St. Louis Public Radio
People started a blue ribbon chain at St. Gabriel the Archangel Church near Francis Park to honor a police sergeant shot Nov. 20. The ribbon extended to Pernod and Hampton, where the shooting occurred.

Updated Nov. 21 at 8  p.m. with video from Chief Dotson — St. Louis Metropolitan Police  officials say the suspect in the ambush of a police officer has been killed in a shootout. Chief Sam Dotson said 19-year-old George P. Bush III was shot hours after he pulled up beside a marked police car near the Hampton Village Shopping Center in south St. Louis and shot a 46-year-old police sergeant, who was released from the hospital Monday morning.

"The individual that we believe is responsible for shooting a police officer tonight was confronted in this neighborhood," Dotson told reporters early Monday morning near the intersection of Smiley and Leola avenues, in the Lindenwood Park neighborhood.

"He again shot at police officers and officers returned fire, striking him and he is deceased," Dotson said. "The man was known to police. He was believed to have been involved in several robberies and possibly a homicide over the past couple of days.

"We believe that he knew that he was good for those crimes and that we were looking for him. That's why he aggressively attacked a police officer tonight," Dotson said.

Bush was out on bond for a 2015 felony resisting arrest charge. Court records list a last-known address in  Lindenwood Park, where he was killed.

On Monday night, hundreds of people gathered near St. Gabriel the Archangel Church in southwest St. Louis to honor the police officer who was shot. They held a blue ribbon from the church to intersection where the officer was shot.  

Dotson told St. Louis Public Radio's Jason Rosenbaum said the officer was released from the hospital earlier on Monday:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KiqnyoHgsJ4

Original story

A sergeant with the St. Louis Metropolitan Police Department is expected to survive after being shot twice in the face Sunday night.

Chief Sam Dotson said the 46-year-old officer, was driving southbound on Hampton between Tilles Park and the Hampton Village shopping center around 7:30 p.m.when he encountered traffic.

As the sergeant slowed his marked vehicle, Dotson said, a car pulled up on his left side, and the driver, later identified as George P. Bush III, pointed a gun at the officer.

"The officer says he saw the muzzle flashes and felt the glass breaking in his window as the shots came through and struck him in the head," Dotson said in a press conference at Barnes-Jewish Hospital that the department broadcast on Periscope.

St. Louis Metropolitan Police Chief Sam Dotson is joined by, from left Major John Hayden, Jeff Roorda with the police union, and Mayor Francis Slay as he speaks to the press about the shooting of an officer on Nov. 20.
Credit Metropolitan St. Louis Police twitter feed
St. Louis Metropolitan Police Chief Sam Dotson is joined by, from left Major John Hayden, Jeff Roorda with the police union, and Mayor Francis Slay as he speaks to the press about the shooting of an officer on Nov. 20.

Dotson said the sergeant could only describe the shooter's vehicle as a silver car that fled east on Pernod. He said the department was scouring the area for video footage, and had called in additional department resources to hunt for the suspect. He said he had also talked with St. Louis County Police Chief Jon Belmar and Bret Johnson, the head of the Missouri State Highway Patrol.

"It’s a very dangerous job, and when officers are driving down the street and are ambushed, it makes us all take pause," Dotson said. 

Mayor Francis Slay, who joined Dotson at the briefing, called the shooting a traumatic event for the officer, his family and the city. 

"He didn't deserve this," Slay said of the unnamed officer, a 20-year veteran of the force who is married and has three children. "He was protecting our streets, and was shot twice without provocation. This tells you how much we have to appreciate our police officers."

The department's officers will ride two to a car until further notice, Dotson said. He and the mayor are urging anyone with information to call the police department or St. Louis Regional Crimestoppers.

Follow Rachel on Twitter: @rlippmann

Copyright 2021 St. Louis Public Radio. To see more, visit St. Louis Public Radio.

Lippmann returned to her native St. Louis after spending two years covering state government in Lansing, Michigan. She earned her undergraduate degree from Northwestern University and followed (though not directly) in Maria Altman's footsteps in Springfield, also earning her graduate degree in public affairs reporting. She's also done reporting stints in Detroit, Michigan and Austin, Texas. Rachel likes to fill her free time with good books, good friends, good food, and good baseball.
Rachel Lippmann
Lippmann returned to her native St. Louis after spending two years covering state government in Lansing, Michigan. She earned her undergraduate degree from Northwestern University and followed (though not directly) in Maria Altman's footsteps in Springfield, also earning her graduate degree in public affairs reporting. She's also done reporting stints in Detroit, Michigan and Austin, Texas. Rachel likes to fill her free time with good books, good friends, good food, and good baseball.
Since entering the world of professional journalism in 2006, Jason Rosenbaum dove head first into the world of politics, policy and even rock and roll music. A graduate of the University of Missouri School of Journalism, Rosenbaum spent more than four years in the Missouri State Capitol writing for the Columbia Daily Tribune, Missouri Lawyers Media and the St. Louis Beacon.
Wayne Pratt is a veteran journalist who has made stops at radio stations, wire services and websites throughout North America. He comes to St. Louis Public Radio from Indianapolis, where he was assistant managing editor at Inside Indiana Business. Wayne also launched a local news operation at NPR member station WBAA in West Lafayette, Indiana, and spent time as a correspondent for a network of more than 800 stations. His career has included positions in Sydney, Nova Scotia, Toronto, Ontario and Phoenix, Arizona. Wayne grew up near Ottawa, Ontario and moved to the United States in the mid-90s on a dare. Soon after, he met his wife and has been in the U.S. ever since.