OFFICER SHOOTS MAN IN DRUG RAID NEAR CEMETERY

A Memphis police officer critically wounded a man during a drug raid
Tuesday at the home of the caretakers for the Baron Hirsch Cemetery in
South Memphis.

Insp. Richard Sojourner said members of a team of vice and narcotics
officers served a search warrant at the house at 1523 Rozelle after
receiving a tip that drugs were being sold there.

When officers knocked on the door at about 12:15 p.m., the people inside
refused to let them in.

The officers kicked in a back door and found a man and a woman in the
living room. They also found that one of the bedrooms was locked.

"Officers demanded the door be opened, and when it wasn't, they forced
entry," Sojourner said.

A man in the room charged at one of the officers with a box-cutter,
Sojourner said. "The officer fired one shot that hit the suspect in the
left cheek."

The injured man was taken to the Regional Medical Center at Memphis, where
he was in critical condition. No one else was injured.

The brick house is in a remote area off Rozelle next to the cemetery.
Police said the two men who live there are the cemetery's caretakers.

"A reliable informant told officers that the suspects were selling
marijuana and cocaine from the house," Sojourner said.

Police arrested all three people in the home but would not release the
names late Tuesday because they had not been charged.

The officer involved in the shooting was also not identified. He is an
undercover officer with the vice and narcotics drug team.

Whenever an officer is involved in a shooting, he or she is relieved of
duty with pay while the Police Department's security squad investigates the
incident, Sojourner said.

This is the 40th shooting involving Memphis police officers this year.

The shooting was the second in one week involving police officers.

On July 22, two officers responded to a domestic dispute at a home in the
newly annexed Countrywood area. As the officers investigated, a man got
into a scuffle with one of them, wrestled the officer's gun away and shot
him. The wounded officer's partner shot and wounded the man, who then shot
himself with the first officer's gun.