A woman brandishing a gun, at times to her head, was shot and wounded by police after a long negotiation in the parking lot of a business in Norwood, Massachusetts, on Friday, police said.
The woman was rushed from the scene on Morse Street and flown to a hospital in Boston with a single gunshot wound to her mid-section, Norwood Police Chief William Brooks said at a news conference.
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According to police, the woman had barged into the storage facility, armed with a gun, which she allegedly pointed at a man she was having a dispute with. The man, who is an employee at the business, was able to dash out of the store and sprint across the street, alerting a co-worker to do the same. The employee called 911 shortly before 1 p.m., and officers quickly responded.
"We saw the woman in the parking lot, holding the firearm, initially holding it to her head," Brooks said.
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An officer ended up negotiating with her for about 45 minutes at the scene.
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As police negotiated with the woman, nearby businesses were on high alert, as a large police presence was seen on Morse Street Friday afternoon.
"We were on lockdown, we locked all the doors and everything obviously, but there were a lot of police on the scene, so it was definitely good to know," a witness said. "It was definitely scary."
According to police, as they tried to negotiate with the woman, she was pointing the gun at her head and then at officers.
"They kept trying to de-escalate the situation, calm her down, even saying, 'you don't want us to have to do this please move back,' pleading with her to move back, pleading with her to put the gun down," Brooks said.
The woman was shot when she approached officers closer than she had before and pointed the gun at them, according to Brooks. The officer fired a single shot, hitting the woman in the mid-section.
She was rushed into an ambulance and taken a short distance to the Norwood Airport where she was loaded into a medical helicopter and flown to a Boston hospital. There was no official word on her condition late Friday night.
The woman wasn't identified beyond being middle-aged and having recently moved to Norwood, Brooks said. He didn't know if the gunshot wound was considered life-threatening.
"We hope that she is going to be OK," he said.
Brooks didn't share information about the nature of the initial dispute, but said the officers who engaged in the standoff showed admirable restraint, since she pointed her gun at them several times. No officer was hurt during the incident.
"The officers held their fire, my hat's really off to them for that," he said. "They clearly did not want to fire, they held off firing, they would have been justified if they would have fired much earlier than they did."
The shooting is being investigated by state and local police.
