NSW Deputy Commissioner Geoff McKechnie confirmed a police operation in Cowra resulted in a 32-year-old man sustaining a gunshot wound to his lower back, while speaking to media in Dubbo this afternoon.
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The man is in a stable condition and being airlifted to Orange Base Hospital.
Mr McKechnie said the man was wanted by police, but was unaware of the nature of the warrants for his arrest, and officers were seeking his arrest today when the shooting occurred.
“There were a number of confrontations between this person and police for around 40 minutes,” Deputy Commissioner Geoff McKechnie said.
“Detectives from Oxley LAC are conducting an investigation. It’s early days but we’ll be conducting a very thorough investigation to get to the bottom of this.”
The Commissioner told reporters it was his understanding that the Cowra man was armed on multiple occasions during the pursuit in Jindalee Circuit.
“I understand at one point he was armed with a screwdriver but not at the time he was shot,” he said.
Commissioner McKechnie urged the community to remain calm, and encouraged anybody with vision of the shooting to take it to police.
“We’d urge the community down there to remain calm. The incident has occurred, we’ll thoroughly investigate it and those findings will at some point be made public. I just urge people to remain calm and I’m sure the community down there will assist us as much as they can,” he said.
“We understand that some photographs are appearing on social media. What I’d say to people who have any electronic images or video of what possibly occurred today is we would ask they contact their local police and provide that information to the police.
“There’s one particular image that’s been displayed on Facebook and there’s some agitation around that in the community.
“What I would say about that image is that it does not depict the time of which the offender was shot by police, that was earlier in the pursuit. The image depicts a male person being confronted by three police officers on the street.”
Police weren’t allowing traffic into Victor Street this afternoon, blocking entry into Jindalee Circuit.
Details here.