Charlotte-Mecklenburg police confirmed Friday evening that only one gunman shot at officers as they tried to arrest him on April 29, an incident in which eight officers were shot, four of them fatally.
Police leaders also said that because suspect Terry Clark Hughes Jr. shooting from several windows of the home on Galway Drive, officers believed there was more than one gunman inside.
Even after Hughes jumped from a second-floor window and was fatally shot, officers saw movement from one of the windows he was shooting from and used “suppressive fire” on the windows as injured officers were evacuated, Deputy Chief Tonya Arrington said.
Police confirmed that all of the shell casings found in the home were from the AR-15 Hughes used, she said. And they confirmed something the chief had already said: that there is no evidence of friendly fire.
Arrington and Police Chief Johnny Jennings provided the updates during a news conference at police headquarters.
A U.S. Marshals Service fugitive task force of federal, state and local officers had gone to the home to arrest Hughes on pending warrants for eluding police during a chase in Lincoln County in January and misdemeanor possession of a firearm, officials said. But Hughes started shooting at them with an AR-15 rifle.
Three members of the task force were killed: William “Alden” Elliott and Sam Poloche, the state Department of Adult Correction Officers, and Deputy U.S. Marshal Thomas M. “Tommy” Weeks Jr. CMPD Officer Joshua Eyer, one of the officers who responded to the shooting after it began, was also killed.
Hughes told a woman and a 17-year-old in the house to leave or go downstairs before he started shooting, Arrington said.
After Hughes was shot in the front yard and the two women were safely evacuated, police used an armored vehicle to tear down the walls at the front of the house. Arrington said police did that Friday because they weren’t sure if there was another shooter in the house or not.
Charlotte police are investigating what happened and continue to review more than 1,000 bodycam videos and nearly 9,000 images, plus physical evidence, Arrington said.
This is a developing story and will be updated.
