About an hour after Lancaster City Mayor Danene Sorace asked the public to be patient during the investigation into Sunday’s fatal police-involved shooting of a 27-year-old man, police used a chemical agent to disperse a crowd of about 100 people that gathered outside the police station.
The protest Sunday night resulted in damage to the police station and prompted police to use pepper spray on the crowd. A stand-off is ongoing, police said.
“This has been a heartbreaking day for our city. I grieve for the loss of life and know that there are more questions to be answered as the investigation continues,” Sorace said in a statement issued in the wake of the shooting of Ricardo Munoz.
Munoz was shot after police responded to a domestic violence call at 4:15 p.m. Sunday in the 300 block of Laurel Street.
District Attorney Heather Adams said footage from a police body camera shows the officer in front of a home when Munoz “immediately emerges from inside and runs toward the officer, brandishing a knife above his head, in clear view, in a threatening manner.”
The video, which was released by the DA’s office, shows the officer firing at Munoz, who was pronounced dead at the scene. No one else was injured.
The first officer to respond to the domestic violence call was alone at the scene when Munoz was shot, investigators said. They said the video appears to show Munoz charging the officer with a large knife. The entire incident from the officer’s first encounter with Munoz to the shooting took just a few seconds.
Sorace said the officer involved in the shooting has been placed on leave.
Police said Sunday night’s protest involved more than 100 people who locked arms on the access ramp at the west side of the police station. When they ignored warnings to disperse police used “chemical munitions."
Some protesters threw bricks through the front window of the station and the post office, police said, and the crowd damaged a Lancaster County vehicle that was parked in front of the station.
“People on the ramp, West Chestnut Street.and the park adjacent to the station threw water bottles, glass bottles, rocks, bricks, gallon jugs of liquids and parts of plastic road barricades at officers,” police said. “OC spray was also deployed at protestors that refused to move from the ramp and were physically challenging Officers that were moving to clear people from the ramp.”
Protestors are still gathered outside the station and have thrown traffic barricades, large planters and trash receptacles across the ramp," Police said early Monday. "We are asking people to avoid the area surrounding the police station.”
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