PORTLAND, Ore. (KOIN) – A wanted 16-year-old suspect was shot and killed Wednesday night after a shootout with police in Salem, leaving an officer hospitalized, according to authorities.
Police said officers encountered the teen, identified as 16-year-old Robert Fletemier Brown, in a parked car in a residential neighborhood on Oak Park Drive Northeast.
Officers said they were going to arrest the teen for his involvement in a March shooting near the Salem Center Mall where a teen was grazed by a bullet and survived.
The teen was also wanted in connection with a shooting in June near Columbia Bank on Center Street in northeast Salem, authorities said.
According to police, when they approached the car around 5 p.m., the teen pulled out a gun and shots were fired by both the teen and officers.
KOIN 6 News talked with a neighbor who lives across the street from where the shooting took place.
“The flash bangs, the big booms, I thought it was the M-80s going off, fireworks and stuff like that, because right after that you hear the ‘pop, pop, pop,’ and I thought they were firecrackers but then when you’re looking outside you saw the SWAT team and police and everything surrounding the car,” neighbor Beca Bonnot said
Bonnot told KOIN 6 News the teen’s car had been parked there for a while before police arrived, but she does not believe he lived in the neighborhood.
Four Salem police officers are now on paid leave while state police investigate how the shooting unfolded.
Authorities said the injured officer was taken to Salem Health and is expected to recover.