S.C. Officer Shot And Killed By 17-Year-Old Gang Member, Who Then Killed Himself To Avoid Arrest

On Friday afternoon, a South Carolina police officer was shot and killed by a 17-year-old gang member while attempting to arrest him. The same suspect later killed himself when police cornered him.

Ken Miller, chief of the Greenville police, advised at a press conference that the shooting death occurred at approximately 12:30 p.m. when several officers went to interview to a young man named Deontea Perry Mackey who had identified himself as being a gang member. Original reports on the story had Miller as saying the officers went to serve a warrant, but he later corrected himself and said the officers wanted to speak to the man regarding a weapon purchase. Once the alleged gang member saw the officers approaching he began to flee and while running he fired multiple shots at the officers giving chase.

Twenty-eight year old Officer Allen Lee Jacobs was shot several times. News 4 Jax reported that Jacobs never got the chance to draw his own gun and had also been wearing a bulletproof vest. He was taken to Greenville Memorial Hospital with life threatening injuries. Chief Miller spoke of the effect the death will have on the force.

“Our officers who were here on the scene and to assist performed CPR on our officer, the CPR was unsuccessful and he was declared deceased at the hospital… When you lose an officer the community loses and officer. We lose, we hurt, we ache, we feel this. Our community will too. Nobody wants to lose their officers.”

After Mackey had shot officer Jacobs he continued his flight. After a while the alleged gang member paused to place a brief phone call to his mother telling her of his intentions, he then took his gun and fatally shot himself when he noticed that his escape route was blocked off by police officers.

Officer Jacobs had served with the Army in Iraq and had been a member of the Greenville police force for four-and-a-half years. The name of the officer was originally withheld by the force until they could advise his family that he had been shot and killed. The officer was a father of two children with a wife pregnant with their third child, with a due date in July. Allen Jacobs is remembered by the department as being a dedicated officer with a great work ethic, who was also an “extraordinary person.”

According to the New York Daily News when Mackey shot and killed Jacobs, he made him the first officer in Greenville to be killed in the line of duty since 1996. Back in 2014, an officer survived an attack from another suspect who ran over the officer, breaking his leg, when the suspect was told to turn down the music in his car.

"In an instant, lives can change forever," Greenville Police Chief Ken Miller said after officer killed in action. pic.twitter.com/PneEcguhSw

— Anna Lee (@annazlee) March 18, 2016

Following the shooting of one of their own, the Greenville police department changed their Facebook profile picture to show a Greenville police badge covered with a black banner. The officers will be receiving peer support for the comrade that they lost. There has also been a GoFundMe page created in order to help officer Jacob’s family that has managed to raise over $16,000 in a matter of hours once news of his death began to spread.

Data obtained from the National Law Enforcement Memorial Fund, a nonprofit that tracks the death of police officers, shows that the Greenville police officer became the 14th officer to be fatally shot in the line of duty this year.

[Photo Courtesy of Greenville Police Department]