Two North Little Rock police officers shot and injured a man Tuesday morning after he pointed a gun at officers, a department spokesman said.
Neighbors said the man, who had not been publicly identified as of Tuesday evening, was walking up and down Rimrock Place and had pointed the weapon toward at least one person, according to police spokesman Sgt. Amy Cooper.
The first call about him arrived at 7:37 a.m., Cooper said, and neighbors told the responding officers that the man had gone into Apartment A at 112 Rimrock Place. Neighbors later told reporters that was where the man had lived for some years.
Officers negotiated with the man -- asking him to peacefully leave the apartment -- for more than 40 minutes, then he stepped outside and pointed the firearm toward the officers, Cooper said.
Two officers fired their weapons, striking the man at least once, Cooper said. The total number of gunshots was not immediately known, she said.
Emergency personnel took the man to UAMS Medical Center in Little Rock, where he remained late Tuesday, according to Cooper. His condition was unknown.
In accordance with department policy, both officers have been placed on administrative leave, Cooper said.
The 100 block of Rimrock Place is a collection of two-story, brick houses, each divided into two residences, on a hill just north of Interstate 40 and Interstate 30.
In front of the apartment's door, a light trail of dried blood led from the shot man's doorstep across the steep lawn to the parking lot.
Neighbors said two indentations in the brick around the man's front door were bullet holes, and chunks of brick had fallen onto the front step. His was one of the few residences that did not have a glass front door in front of a steel one.
Cooper said Rimrock Place is generally a quiet area. Residents who live there agreed.
"This was not the first time they've taken him," said Elijah Noble, who has lived in the area for more than a decade. "But to be honest, the only time I've seen [police] stop here was for him."
Though they did not know his name, many neighbors said they'd seen him in similar situations before. From time to time, he would fly into a rage, they said, though he normally was a quiet neighbor.
"Every now and then he'd just go off," said Chris Griffin, whose mother lives in one of the houses on the block.
Griffin and his brother left their mother's house early to get breakfast, he said Tuesday afternoon, and when they returned, the house was surrounded by police.
"I heard it was him," Griffin said.
Noble, Griffin and Griffin's mother, Vicki McRaney, said they heard about six shots after officers arrived.
"It sounded almost like firecrackers," McRaney said.
She said the man had started acting in an unusual manner over the past few months. Before that, she said, she'd never been bothered by him.
Gary McCall, who lives less than a block from the man's residence, said he woke to a noise that sounded like someone beating on his door. Later, he learned that the noise was gunshots.
"I looked out, and he was on the ground," McCall said.
The man is tall, McCall said, at least 6 feet, and looks "like he could wrestle a bear." McCall watched from his window as officers handcuffed him, performed first aid and waited for an ambulance to arrive. He said the man was handcuffed on the ground near the parking lot, and that at least once he heard the man scream.
McCall, who has lived in the area for eight years, said he could always tell when the man was going to become unruly. He'd take off his clothes, throw them in the front yard and begin yelling at people, he said.
Sometimes a neighbor would call police, McCall said. But the man had never had a gun before.
McCall said he noticed a mound of clothes in the man's front yard late Monday evening and worried that something was going to happen.
"I saw all the stuff in the yard last night," McCall said.
Metro on 03/27/2019