After police shooting in Garden City, 2 people have been arrested. The older one is 18
Garden City police officers fired multiple shots after they responded to reports of gunshots at a Garden City home Wednesday morning, and police said later in the day that two people were arrested without any injuries.
Interim Police Chief Cory Stambaugh said at a news conference that officers were dispatched to a residence in the 9200 block of Stoneham Drive at 9:30 a.m. They heard and saw gunshots being fired from inside the house and learned there was someone else in the house other than the person firing the gun, he said.
Officers went inside, found a man who was brought to safety and “took the suspect into custody without incident,” Stambaugh said.
Stambaugh said in a news release Wednesday afternoon that two teenagers were arrested, but the release did not clarify which of the people was “the suspect” he referred to earlier.
A 16-year-old was arrested on one count of attempted murder and two counts of aggravated assault, and an 18-year-old on one count of unlawful discharge of a firearm, according to the release. All of the charges are felonies.
Two officers fired their weapons, Stambaugh said, and both have been placed on administrative leave, which is routine in officer-involved shootings.
Stambaugh through a spokesperson declined to answer any additional questions from the Idaho Statesman, including the number of shots fired.
“It’s unfortunate and tragic that we have to respond to these kinds of incidents,” Stambaugh said. “But in this particular case, the initial information says that the police ran towards gunfire protecting innocent people and the neighbors.”
Police had blocked off Stoneham Drive and Wakefield Street with police tape Wednesday afternoon, while officers filed in and out of a home near the intersection of the two roads.
Neighbors describe shots fired
Brian Walker, 63, who lives down the street, told the Statesman in an interview that he heard gunshots just before 10 a.m. He said he walked down Stoneham Drive toward the gunshots he heard from his home on Arney Lane and witnessed police arrive and push neighbors away from the house.
Walker said he saw five police officers with rifles enter the house around 10:15 a.m. He said he didn’t hear any shots after the officers entered the home, and that police walked out shortly afterward with a man in handcuffs.
“This has been a sleepy little neighborhood, so I was really shocked,” Walker said.
Tim Scharff, 67, who lives four houses down from where the shooting took place, said he heard one volley of five shots, followed by a second volley from a gun with a different pitch and a third volley that sounded like they came from the same gun as the first group.
There was a pause for several minutes, he said, when he heard sirens. After that he heard more gunshots, a fourth volley that matched the sound of the first and third volleys. Each of the volleys was about five shots, he said.
“A total of at least 20 bullets, which is an awful lot of lead to be flying through the air of a residential neighborhood,” Scharff said.
Paula Torrano, 68, who lives behind the home police responded to, said she initially thought the gunshots were a nail gun from nearby construction. She heard several shots, followed by sirens and another volley of shots. Steve Torrano, her husband, said he estimated 15 to 20 shots were fired.
“To have something like that happen in your neighborhood is very disturbing,” Paula Torrano said.
Police officers stopped by the Torranos’ house after the shooting to ask whether they had noticed any bullet holes in their house or fence, they said.
Craig Wood, 61, who lives on West Osprey Meadows drive, was retrieving tools from the work bench in his garage when he heard about 30 seconds of gunfire, he said. Muffled by his garage door, it sounded like it could have been fireworks, he said.
Scharff said the recent spike in police shootings in the area, and the large police forces he’s witnessed in the neighborhood in response to small incidents, have caused him to lose trust in the police.
Boise police lead CITF investigation
The Boise Police Department will lead the Critical Incident Task Force investigation into the shooting. Typically police try to send their report of the incident to an outside prosecutor in four to six weeks, Stambaugh said. Garden City police won’t release the names of the officers involved in the shooting until the investigation is completed, the interim chief said.
Stambaugh said the last time Garden City police were involved in a shooting was in the spring of 2021.
The Treasure Valley has had several police shootings this year, including four in recent weeks. Stambaugh said the last time he remembers a similar quantity of shootings was in the late 1990s, and that it’s hard to say what could be driving it. Causes of the uptick could include people in mental health crises not receiving the help they need or people being released from prison or parole too soon, he said.
“There’s just a lot of factors and I think we need to take each individual incident on its face value and on its merits and dig down into each incident and get an answer for each incident,” he said.
Garden City police were assigned to investigate a Boise police shooting in the North End two weeks ago and hope to have that report delivered to a prosecutor in two to three weeks, Stambaugh said. There have been two other shootings involving Boise police in the past seven weeks.
This story was originally published August 9, 2023 at 12:33 PM.
