COLUMBUS – Columbus police Friday morning had not released the name of a man shot and killed by an officer after the man pulled a BB gun from a bag as he stepped out of an ambulance to go into an emergency room.
UPDATE: Police identify the dead man as Christopher Wade, 39, and the officer as Ofc. Nathan Komisarek, a 14-year veteran of the division.
Police say the man was experiencing psychological problems and medics in Westerville who picked him up Thursday afternoon asked Columbus police to accompany them to Mount Carmel St. Ann’s Hospital on Cleveland Avenue where the shooting happened.
Authorities say the man pulled the gun out of a bag after seeing the officer. The police department says the officer fired after the man refused to comply with repeated requests to get on the ground.
According to Columbus police, Westerville medics requested Columbus officers to go with them as they transported from the 600 block of Garden Terrace Road at 1:03 p.m.
Officers followed the medics to the hospital where the man stepped out of the ambulance and walked to the entrance to the emergency room carrying a bag, a Columbus police spokeswoman said.
Witnesses say the man looked back, saw an officer, then reached down into the bag and pulled out a gun.
Witnesses say the officer repeatedly asked the man to get on the ground but he did not comply and the officer fired, striking the man, after he refused to drop the gun, spokeswoman Denise Alex-Bouzounis said. The man was rushed into the emergency room where he was pronounced deceased at 1:54 p.m.
During the investigation, police discovered the man’s weapon was a BB gun, Alex-Bouzounis said.
No other injuries were reported.
Neither the name of the man nor the name of the officer had been released early Friday.
This is the seventh police involved shooting in 2017, Alex-Bouzounis said.