A po­lice of­fi­cer cur­rent­ly on in­jury leave shot and killed an al­leged rob­ber dur­ing a botched rob­bery at­tempt at Long­denville on Sat­ur­day night.

In­ves­ti­ga­tors said around 8:30 pm, the po­lice con­sta­ble and his wife went to buy a boat en­gine. They told po­lice they drove a B2500 twin cab along a bumpy grav­el road. When he reached the lo­ca­tion, he met two men, one of whom had a gun. The of­fi­cer said the gun­men placed the weapon to his neck and an­nounced a holdup.

The gun­man then en­tered the van and forced the po­lice­men to dri­ve fur­ther along the grav­el road. An­oth­er ban­dit sat on the tray of the van.

Af­ter dri­ving a lit­tle way, the of­fi­cer was or­dered out of the van. He told in­ves­ti­ga­tors that the un­armed rob­ber hit him a slap on the face and told him to hand over the mon­ey. The po­lice­man’s wife hand­ed over $15,000.

Po­lice said the gun­man then shoved the gun at the po­lice man’s mouth but he man­aged to snatch hold of the gun and fired at the rob­bers who start­ed to run.

The of­fi­cer then jumped in­to his van and drove straight to the Long­denville po­lice sta­tion. He told po­lice about the in­ci­dent and took them to the scene of the shoot­ing.

Half an hour lat­er, they found a man wear­ing three-quar­ter pants, a grey jer­sey and a pink face mask ly­ing dead. He was slumped face down and had a Tau­rus  9 mm re­volver close to his body. There were gun­shot wounds to the chest and back. One mag­a­zine fit­ted with 6 rounds of 9 mm was fit­ted in the firearm.

The body was re­moved to the Foren­sic Sci­ence Cen­tre and an au­top­sy will be done on Mon­day.  

—Rad­hi­ca De Sil­va