Mesa, AZ: Mesa officer kills knife-wielding man Police were at residence to serve protection order

by Megan Boehnke - Nov. 7, 2009 12:00 AM
The Arizona Republic

A knife-wielding man was shot and killed by a police officer in east Mesa on Friday afternoon, authorities said.

Mesa police Sgt. Ed Wessing and Detective Mike Melendez said officers responded to a home in the 4900 block of East Colby Street at about 1:10 p.m. to help a 21-year-old woman serve an order of protection against a 22-year-old man.

The woman waited in the front yard while an officer went to the front door to serve the order on the boyfriend, officers said. After the man took out a knife, an officer fired a shot, killing him.

"During this contact with the male, he produced a knife and one of the police officers discharged his firearm, fatally wounding the male inside the home," Wessing said.

Neither the officer nor the girlfriend was injured. The names of the boyfriend and the officer have not been released.

The incident took place in a middle-class neighborhood north of University Drive and west of Higley Road.

Former neighbor Deniece Boronda, whose son now lives down the street from where the shooting occurred, said the man had caused problems in the past, that he was noisy and fought with his girlfriend.

Boronda said that she had heard them fighting in the middle of the night and that the skirmishes had put people in the neighborhood on edge.

Another neighbor, Stephanie Morris, said she saw police talking with the boyfriend in the street earlier in the day as she was leaving her home. She came back, took a nap and awoke to see many police cars in the street.

Police later confirmed that officers had visited the house earlier in the day.

Morris said there had been an increased police presence in the neighborhood the past several days, with patrol cars on the street every day.

She said that the boyfriend was a nuisance, an unpleasant neighbor and that she had just gotten off her phone with her husband, wondering if it was time to move.

By 4 p.m., several police cars remained at the scene. The boyfriend's body remained in the house. Children with bicycles rode back and forth in front of the home, surveying the scene.