Penn carjacking suspect shot

A University of Pennsylvania police officer fatally shot a carjacker yesterday at the edge of the school's campus in West Philadelphia as the two struggled over control of the officer's gun.

A university health system employee also was injured when the stolen van that the man was driving jumped a sidewalk as he tried to evade traffic and struck her.

The man, who was not immediately identified, had been armed during the carjacking, but he left the weapon in the van after he crashed it into a row of parked cars on Spruce Street near 40th Street and bolted on foot, police said.

He was the seventh person fatally wounded in a confrontation with law enforcement officers in the city this year.

The university's public safety office said events leading up to the shooting began about 11 a.m., when workers at a university garage near 32d Street and Convention Avenue confronted a man they saw trying to steal a Penn pickup truck.

"I went back there and said to the guy, 'This is my truck,' and he said it was his truck," said John McGuire, a parking department maintenance worker. "He had the truck running with the lights on. I chased him and he went back toward the elevators and ducked behind a car."

McGuire said that parking lot cashier Wayne Smith ran to help and the man "stood up from behind the car and held the gun pointed at Wayne and me."

McGuire said he alerted a Penn police officer parked nearby that the man had run west out of the parking garage.

Police said the man tried to carjack two vehicles before stopping a white van on Spruce near 33d Street and forcing the driver out at gunpoint.

"He put the gun right in that guy's temple," McGuire said.

Police said that the gunman, in trying to avoid traffic, drove the van up on a sidewalk and hit the pedestrian, who was reported in stable condition at the Hospital of the University of Pennsylvania.

Brian Quimby, a Penn junior from Mount Laurel, said he had stopped at a lunch truck at 38th and Spruce when he heard the growl of an engine.

"It was a van and it was flying down Spruce Street; it was going fast, 90 m.p.h. maybe," he said. "Everyone stopped and turned."

About 20 seconds later, he said, a Penn police car raced up the street, but became stuck briefly in traffic on 38th Street.

"Then another cop car, another cop car and another cop car went by," he said, adding a friend called him a short time later to report that he had heard gunfire.

The carjacker crossed 40th Street and then apparently lost control of the van, slamming it into four parked cars, officials said.

He ran northbound with a Penn police officer in pursuit through a parking lot to the 200 block of Preston Street.

"There was an ensuing struggle, in which the offender attempted to take control of the officer's service weapon, which discharged," according to a university statement.

McGuire, the parking department worker, said police drove him to where the chase ended near 40th and Spruce to identify the man.

"I identified him while he was laying on the ground with the paramedics working on him. He was cursing them out and the whole pavement was covered in blood," he said.

The man died at 12:37 p.m. at the Penn hospital.

Jennifer Liepin, a recent Penn graduate, said she found her forest green Saturn sandwiched in the pileup of cars.

"I heard two gunshots, so I looked out my window and saw a man running between two houses," she said. "Then I saw my car. It was surreal."

Andrew Loh, a Penn junior from Radnor, returned from classes to find the van crashed in front of his apartment building on Spruce and police scouring the block.

"The cops were looking for the [suspect's] gun," he said. "They didn't know where the gun was."

He said one officer radioed the ambulance taking the wounded man to the hospital and asked the paramedics "to see if it's on him."

The gun was later found in the van, police said.

Loh said the proximity of the shooting to his apartment made him "a little nervous."

"I've heard about a couple other shootings on campus over the three years I've been here," he said. "This was right outside my door."

At the same time, he said the university "does pretty much everything they can" to maintain a visible police presence "to keep students safe."

The identity of the officer involved in the shooting was not released.

The fatal shooting, the first involving a Penn police officer, will be investigated by the Philadelphia Police Department's Homicide Unit, which is standard procedure.

So far this year, five men - one of them unarmed - have been fatally wounded by police gunfire.

Another man, a suspected drug dealer, was shot and killed last month by an FBI agent when, authorities said, he appeared to be reaching for a weapon during an undercover sting operation.

Authorities have not released any findings from investigations into those six shootings.

Two other gunmen killed themselves with bullets to the head this year after they fired at police and officers returned fire.

Last year, 20 people were killed in confrontations with police in the city, the most since 1980, and the most among the 10 largest U.S. cities.