This Thursday Texas deputy Alden Clopton, who was shot 4 times on late night traffic stop, is expected to survive according to authorities.
Clanton is a field training officer and an 11-year veteran with the Harris County Constable Precinct 7 and was the victim of this “ambush”, said Lt. Holland Jones.
According to the police, the shooting happened about at 11:18 a.m. (CT), right after Clopton conduced a traffic stop near the Texas Southern University. He was leaning through the rolled-down passenger window of a fellow deputy’s patrol car and tried to help him fix the audio on her dash-cam, when then a gunman approached just behind him and fired six shots.
Dr. Joseph Love from the Memorial Hermann Hospital said that Clopton had six “injury sites,” some in the back, but he couldn’t say how many times the officer was shot, but he also had good news, saying that Clopton could be discharged from the hospital in about a week.
Houston Police Department spokesman Kese Smith stated that Ann Glasgow, who is the reserve deputy, jumped out of her car and fired once. The suspect escaped, and it was unclear if he was struck, but a “person of interest” that matched the shooter’s description appeared shortly after at a nearby fire station.
Precinct 7 spokeswomen Pamela Greenwood told reporters that Clopton was wearing a bulletproof vest, and still suffered injuries to his abdomen, and after several hours of surgery, doctors had not been able to remove a bullet that had stuck really close to his heart.
First Political Ambush?
Last year, another officer from Harris County, the Deputy Sheriff Darren H. Goforth was shot in the back and killed while filling up his patrol car at a gas station. It seems that Goforth appeared to have been targeted just “because he wore a uniform,” according to Harris County Sheriff Ron Hickman.
Also back in 2014, but not in Texas, the New York police officers Wenjian Liu and Rafael Ramos were ambushed and killed while sitting in their patrol car. The gunman in that attack was identified as Ismaaiyl Brinsley, was shot and then he killed himself, briefly afterward at a subway station.
Authorities discovered he had posted angry messages on social media against police and government, citing two black men killed by officers.
Source: KHOU