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Authorities say a gun used to wound a police detective after a chase in southeastern Pennsylvania on Saturday had been used to wound another person in a drive-by shooting earlier that same day.
Delaware County prosecutors and Chester police said Monday that the gun belonged to Torraize Armstrong, 40, who was shot and killed Saturday afternoon while returning fire from wounded Chester police Detective Steve Byrne, and three other officers.
Byrne, wounded once during the exchange of gunfire, was hospitalized but was released Monday and was recovering at home with his family, authorities said. District Attorney Jack Stollsteimer said he “has become a hero to all the people of the city of Chester by apprehending a very dangerous human being.”
PENNSYLVANIA AUTHORITIES IDENTIFY POLICE OFFICER INJURED IN FATAL SHOOTING EXCHANGE
He noted that Byrne was the third police officer injured by gunfire in the county in about a week and a half.
Stollsteimer said officials had identified Armstrong as a suspect in a shooting that occurred at 11:30 a.m. Saturday in Chester because the shots came from a black car registered to Armstrong. The car was spotted Saturday afternoon and was chased from Chester to Upland and back to Chester, where a tire blew and Armstrong got out, authorities said.
Armstrong “literally started shooting the moment he exited the vehicle,” using a 9mm semi-automatic weapon to fire at the officers, wounding Byrne, Stollsteimer said. Byrne returned fire as did two Upland officers and a Chester Township officer.
Armstrong, struck several times, died Saturday night at Crozer-Chester Medical Center. An initial ballistics examination identified Armstrong’s gun as the same weapon used in the earlier shooting, Stollsteimer said.
“The officers returned fire to save their lives (as you know, Detective Byrne was shot by him) but also to protect the people in the community,” Stollsteimer said.
Chester Police Commissioner Steven Gretsky said Byrne has been with the department for 16 years and is one of its lead detectives. He was actually scheduled to be free Saturday, but was called in as the lead investigator in the drive-by shooting, Gretsky said.
Stollsteimer’s office is leading the investigation and said that while more work needs to be done, “all of the officers who fired their weapons were completely justified in doing so.”
On February 7, two police officers in another part of the county were wounded by gunfire at a home in East Lansdowne that later caught fire, and six sets of human remains were later recovered from the ashes. Stollsteimer attributed the violence to what he called “a culture of gun affinity” that is destroying communities.
“We have too many people with guns who shouldn’t have guns,” he said, noting that on the day of the violence in East Lansdowne, authorities were announcing first-degree murder charges against a 15-year-old boy in the slaying of another 15-year-old boy with a “ghost gun”, a privately manufactured firearm that lacks serial numbers and is virtually untraceable.
“There is no way in this rational world that a 15-year-old can get his hands on a junk gun that only exists so criminals can go out and commit crimes without there being a serial number to trace it back to.” he said.
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