DEADLY GUNFIRE MAY BE LINKED TO DRUGS

An ambush on Sunday night that left a suspect dead and two Metro Police
officers and a security guard wounded may have been drug-related.

Officers found a 27-year-old resident dead and a large amount of drugs when
they entered the apartment about 4 a.m. today after a seven-hour standoff,
Capt. Greg Jolley said.

A second suspect, Jose Vallejo, 44, who surrendered about 30 minutes after
the initial hail of bullets, was booked on three counts of attempted murder
of a police officer and one count of attempted murder, Jolley said.

Police are unsure if the slain suspect was killed by officers or if he shot
himself. An autopsy, most likely to be performed today, will determine how
the man died. The man's name was not released this morning.

The officers' names will not be released for 48 hours, following Metro policy.

A sergeant and two officers were called to the Hampton Court Apartments on
Swenson Street between Flamingo Road and Twain Avenue about 8:30 p.m.
Sunday on a report of shots being fired.

The officers found the door of the darkened second-floor apartment open and
entered with guns drawn. They had been told a shooting victim may be
inside, Sheriff Jerry Keller said.

"Soon as they entered the apartment they were met with a fusillade of
gunfire that struck two of the officers," Keller said. "The officers
returned fire as they were backing out of the apartment."

The sergeant was hit in the shoulder by gunfire and the officer was struck
in the shoulder and face with pellets from a shotgun blast. The security
guard, Martin Lorenzo, 39, who may have been standing in or near the
doorway, was shot in the upper thigh, Deputy Chief Ray Flynn said.

"One officer was hit with a shot that went through the (bullet-resistant)
vest in the shoulder, traversed his body and came out his other shoulder,"
Keller said. "(The suspect) was firing some kind of weapon that could go
through Kevlar."

The 30-year-old sergeant was listed this morning in good condition and the
29-year-old officer was listed in fair condition at University Medical
Center. Lorenzo was in surgery this morning, but had been listed in fair
condition earlier.

"The officers entered the pitch-black apartment and identified themselves
as Metro Police. At that point they were fired on by a shotgun and an
assault rifle," Flynn said. "Two of the officers returned fire."

Police found at least three guns in the apartment this morning, including
an assault rifle.

Officers, including SWAT personnel, converged on the area after the
officers were shot. About 30 minutes later, as police continued to arrive
at the scene, Vallejo emerged from the apartment uninjured and was taken
into custody.

Keller said negotiators tried for hours to contact the suspect still
barricaded in the apartment in an attempt to end the stalemate without more
gunfire. The man never answered any attempts to talk with him.

SWAT officers fired tear gas into the apartment and later sent in a police
dog, which alerted the officers the man was no longer a threat. When
officers entered the apartment, the dead man was found, Jolley said.

Officers are trying to determine what led to the first shots reported
inside the apartment and why the officers were fired upon.

"We're still gathering evidence at this point and we're not going to
speculate," Jolley said.

More than 85 residents of the neighboring apartments were evacuated after
the shooting.

"We evacuated them based on a line of sight from the apartment where the
shots were fired," Flynn said.

Hampton Court resident Joe Silk said he felt as if he were in a war zone
when he heard several shots being fired in the complex.

"I was on the Internet chatting with a friend in Pennsylvania when I heard
the shots," Silk said. "I just wrote, 'The cops are shooting I got to go,'
and I got out of there. My friend's probably wondering if I'm OK."

Silk and the other evacuees were sent to the office of the Deer Creek
Apartments, 700 E. Flamingo Road.

Chystalee Van Patten took refuge in a neighbor's apartment while she waited
to be evacuated.

"I heard a sound like someone was banging to tell me to turn my music down,
but I guess those were gunshots," Van Patten said. "A bullet came right
through my window, so I ran and went to my neighbor's apartment, where we
sprawled flat on the floor until the cops came and told us to get out."

Throughout the early morning hours, evacuated residents huddled at a nearby
apartment complex. Most left their homes wearing whatever they had on at
the time and were not prepared to wait for hours in the cold.

Residents wandered around, some carrying sleeping toddlers.

Some of the displaced residents were allowed back into their apartments
about 5 a.m. Others, whose apartments were closer to the scene, were forced
to wait while detectives investigated.

"The scariest thing about a crime like this is the randomness. It causes
the fear of crime in all of us to rise," Keller said.

The last time a Metro officer was shot was June 14, when Officer Pete Rossi
was shot in the face as he arrived at a robbery call at the Macayo Vegas
restaurant, at 4457 W. Charleston Blvd.

Officer Marc Kahre was the last Metro officer shot to death. On Oct. 11,
1988, Kahre was shot by a man who had earlier fired a bullet through his
ex-girlfriend's front door. Kahre was pursuing the suspect on a Metro
motorcycle when the suspect stopped his car and shot Kahre in the head.

Officer Russell Peterson was the last Metro officer killed. On March 24,
1998, Peterson, assigned to the search and rescue unit, died when a chunk
of ice he was climbing in a training exercise broke away and hit him.