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Four Texas Officers Wounded In Gunfight At Restaurant
Officers Answering Call About Dispute Between Man, Woman
POSTED: 7:32 a.m. EST January 3, 2003
UPDATED: 3:14 p.m. EST January 3, 2003
SAN ANTONIO, Texas -- Four San Antonio police officers were wounded -- two critically -- after a man grabbed guns from two of them while they were trying to break up a fight at a restaurant early Friday, authorities said.
Police said Michael Muniz, 22, one of the wounded officers, later shot the man to death.
Officers David Evans, 51, and Muniz were in critical condition and undergoing emergency surgery Friday at Brooke Army Medical Center.
Police said Evans, a 25-year veteran, was shot in the abdomen and chest, while Muniz, a policeman for only five months, was wounded in the neck and chest.
Officer Nathan Murray, 33, was undergoing surgery at University Hospital for a wound to his face and is considered the most seriously injured of the four.
Detective John Bocko, 34, was punched in the face by the attacker and suffered a bullet-graze wound to his back.
Larry Fitzgerald, a spokesman for the Texas Department of Criminal Justice, identified the dead man as Jamie Lichtenwalter, 26.
Police said he was released from prison in July 2001 after serving seven years of a 12-year sentence for attempted murder. Lichtenwalter was convicted of a November 1992 shooting in Universal City, a San Antonio suburb, that left a teenager brai n-damaged and paralyzed.
Lichtenwalter was 16 at the time of the shooting but was tried as an adult.
Police Chief Albert Ortiz described him as large and very muscular and said he had worked as a bouncer at area strip clubs.
Officers were called to the Denny's restaurant in the northeast section of the city about 3:30 a.m. because of an altercation between the dead man and another man, said Sgt. Gabe Trevino, a San Antonio Police Department spokesman.
Trevino said the suspect was angry because his girlfriend, who Ortiz said was a strip-club dancer, had gone out with a female friend and another man, who was not injured in the incident.
The woman, who was not identified, went to the boyfriend's home after he called on her cell phone to say he needed a key.
"When she shows up there, he's got a shotgun and says, 'I'm going to shoot you. I'm going to kill you. Who were you with?"' Trevino said.
The couple drove back to the restaurant, and the other man was still there. When the altercation started, the woman told a worker at Denny's to call police because her boyfriend had the shotgun in the car, Trevino said.
"Police arrive, and that's where everything went crazy," he said.
The man punched Bocko, grabbed his gun, and eventually fired all 16 rounds in the clip. He later took a gun from Evans and was firing that weapon when he was killed by Muniz, Trevino said.
Ortiz said the man was hit several times and died after falling on top of Muniz.
Attempts to reach employees at the Denny's were unsuccessful. |
