Detective put on unpaid leave over shots fired at man

Keith Paul

Monday, Aug. 21, 2000 | 11:17 a.m.

A Metro Police detective is on paid leave this morning after he fired two shots at a man accused of trying to drive over an officer with a sport utility vehicle on Saturday.

The shooting came on the heels of a Clark County coroner's inquest ruling Thursday that three gang unit detectives and a patrol officer were justified in shooting and killing 19-year-old Frakelin Hardy. The officers fired on Hardy after he drove away from a tavern robbery and then tried to run over another detective on July 10.

In the 8:30 p.m. Saturday shooting, two gang unit detectives approached a man sitting in a 1996 Kia Sportage in a convenience store parking lot at Charleston Boulevard and Honolulu Street.

One detective walked up to the truck and started talking with the man, 39-year-old Jon Stevenson. Police said during the conversation the detective believed Stevenson was under the influence of drugs or alcohol. An open beer container was spotted inside his vehicle. Officers opened the driver's side door and Stevenson then started up the vehicle and sped off, police said.

One detective was standing in front of the open driver's door and was knocked off balance when Stevenson drove away.

"The second detective fired two shots with his duty weapon to stop the driver from running him over," Lt. Wayne Petersen said in a press release.

The bullets hit Stevenson's truck.

The two gang detectives and two other detectives followed Stevenson south on Charleston Boulevard and then to Palm Street. Stevenson drove west off the street, crashing through a chain-link fence in the back yard of a home and then through another fence before he tried to escape on foot, police said.

The detectives caught Stevenson a short distance away. He was booked into the Clark County jail on charges of driving while intoxicated, evading a police officers, obstructing a police officer and assault with a deadly weapon.

Stevenson is a four-time convicted felon with two convictions for possession of heroin as well as burglary and theft convictions. Police say they found a syringe filled with a suspected drug inside his vehicle.

"He went crashing through the back yard and there were people in the home at the time," Petersen said. "Luckily no one was in the back yard at the time and no one was hurt."

The detective who fired the shots will remain on paid leave during the investigation, which is normal department policy. The officer's name will not be released until 48 hours after the shooting, which is also a department policy.

Saturday's shooting incident was the 10th Metro officer-involved shooting this year, with two of those being fatal. In 1999 there were 12 Metro officer-involved shootings.