Open season on police continues.
The man accused of striking three police officers with his vehicle at a Phoenix QuikTrip early Tuesday has been identified as 44-year-old Marc LaQuon Payne.
An angry Phoenix Police Chief Joe Yahner played a video showing a vehicle pulling out of a parking space, circling the parking lot and then accelerating toward the police officers outside the convenience store.
In an early-afternoon press conference, Yahner said two officers were seriously injured and the driver will be booked on three charges of attempted first-degree murder.
“I’m very proud of the men and women of the Phoenix Police Department, and I’m outraged by this incident,” Yahner said.
“Our Phoenix police officers were targeted.”
A 33-year-old police officer who was on his first day of duty suffered a head injury, and a police sergeant, 41, suffered a broken leg. A third officer, 36, managed to jump out of the way but was injured during an extended struggle with the driver, Yahner said.
The video shows the rookie officer thrown several feet in the air and hitting the glass window of the QuikTrip. The officer, whom Yahner would identify only by his first name, Jeremy, then helped take Payne into custody, Yahner said.
There is disturbing, very graphic surveillance video from the convenience store in the article linked above. It’s very obvious that the attack was deliberate and that the intent was to kill.
Police aren’t safe anywhere on the job now. It’s always been a high-risk profession, obviously, but now they’re in danger even during times at work that weren’t previously fraught with danger.
The article also says that the police think that “impairment may have been a factor” but it doesn’t specify whether it was drugs or alcohol, or say how severely impaired the attacker was.
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