A Chaska police officer was shot in the leg Tuesday night, sparking a standoff that ended several hours later when the alleged gunman was killed by police.
After the officer was shot about 7 p.m. in front of a mobile home, the suspect barricaded himself inside, said Chaska Police Chief Scott Knight.
When negotiators spoke to him on the phone, "he expressed his desire to die and to take as many officers with him as he could," Knight said.
The chief said two officers went to the 500-unit Brandondale Mobile Home Park in southeastern Chaska Tuesday evening to check on a man who was said to be heavily armed and suicidal. The suspect came out with a long-barreled gun and one of the officers was shot.
The officer was taken to Hennepin County Medical Center in Minneapolis, where a nursing supervisor said he was in satisfactory condition Tuesday night. Police did not immediately release his name.
Shortly after midnight, about 30 residents applauded as law enforcers dressed in camouflage gear emerged from the area that had been cordoned off for about six hours and put away their rifles.
It was the third incident in three weeks in which metro-area officers have been wounded in a shootout or similar conflict.
The suspect in Chaska, armed with a shotgun and rifle, held police at bay as officers from several departments -- including a SWAT team and a State Patrol helicopter equipped with an infrared camera -- blocked off the surrounding area.
Snipers took up positions around the mobile home.
Knight said that after the suspect fired at a car carrying a woman and two children, hitting the car twice, "we knew we had to deal with the situation in an extreme manner."
Two Allina ambulances entered the park at 9:45 p.m., shortly after onlookers heard two more shots fired. Several more shots were heard from within the blocked-off area shortly after 10 and again about 10:45 p.m.
Jason Rotter, 24, said he was visiting a friend in the trailer park when he heard the initial shots about 6:15 p.m. Rotter, from Eden Prairie, said he saw a man break out a front window from inside a mobile home about 100 yards away and fire a shot.
"We saw the officer go down and yell that he was shot," Rotter said. He said five officers already were on the scene, and more officers arrived within five minutes.
The man in the mobile home fired about six shots, Rotter said. Police then fired between 20 and 25 shots.
Brian Almsted, who lives in the park just down the road from the suspect, said he was "trying to shoo people out of the way" when he heard three gunshots from behind and above where he was standing, and glass flew over his head and into the street.
"There were at least a dozen children in the street," he said. "The whole gunfire thing is happening right around us."
Police had blocked off the main entrance to the park, and an emergency exit was blocked by large posts driven into the ground. Firefighters pulled out the posts, and residents were able to walk or drive away from the scene, Almsted said.
Dennis Roberts, who has lived in the park since 1971, said he saw officers surrounding the suspect's house and heard a flurry of gunshots as he was driving by to go to a grocery store.
"This is about the most serious [incident] I've ever seen," he said. "It's been real quiet" otherwise.
Roberts said it was an unusual way to observe National Night Out.