An off-duty Board of Ed security officer detained a teen allegedly in the act of breaking into his car — then found himself detained by the police, and arrested.
The incident occurred on Hallock Avenue in the Hill Sunday around 12:30 p.m.
Here’s what happened, according to police spokesperson Capt. Rose Dell:
Alerted by a neighbor that two kids had broken into his car, the 32-year-old security officer went outside and yelled at them. “They took off,” and he chased them.
“One ran across the park towards Howard Avenue, and the other jumped a white picket fence into the backyard of a house on 6th Street,” Dell wrote in a release issued Monday afternoon.
The man caught up with one of the fleeing kids, a 14-year-old boy, in the backyard. He “confronted the juvenile and told him to stop running, because he had nowhere to go,” Dell wrote.
The teen “reached into his pocket and turned towards [the security officer]. Believing the juvenile had a weapon, [the officer] took out his gun and fired one round at him. The juvenile was not struck and then put his hands up and surrendered.”
The man subsequently found on the teen a baby monitor that had been inside his car, according to Dell. Officers arrived on the scene, and confirmed that someone had broken the rear driver-side window of the man’s car and damaged the steering column
Police also confirmed that the officer had a valid pistol permit. But they still arrested him, charging him with first-degree criminal attempt to commit assault, risk of injury to a minor, and second-degree reckless endangerment. They issued the teen a summons for second-degree criminal attempt to commit larceny.