Police kill gunman after S. Phila. chase

Police shot and killed a man who pointed an Uzi-type pistol at them after a chase early yesterday in South Philadelphia, during which he hit one of the officers in the face with the gun, authorities said.

The officer who had been struck in the face fired 12 rounds and his partner fired twice, police said.

The 26-year-old gunman, whose identity was not immediately released, was hit multiple times and died at the scene, police said. His .45-caliber gun had 29 rounds in the magazine and one in the chamber.

The man was the eighth person fatally wounded in a confrontation with Philadelphia police this year. Two other men have been killed in shootings involving the FBI and the University of Pennsylvania police.

Chief Inspector William Colarulo of Internal Affairs gave the following account of yesterday's incident:

The two Fourth District officers were on patrol at 1:27 a.m. when they saw a man riding a bicycle southbound on Sixth Street near Dudley Street.

When the man saw the officers, he turned around, revealing a large bulge in the rear waistband of his sweatshirt.

The officers stopped the man. When they tried to check him, he ran west on Hoffman Street, a block north of Dudley, and pulled a gun from his waistband.

He then ran into a house in the middle of the 700 block of Hoffman and closed the door.

When one officer forced open the door, the gunman hit him below the right eye with the muzzle of his weapon and bolted outside.

As he ran east on Hoffman, the man turned and pointed the gun at the officers. The two opened fire with their Glock 9mm pistols, killing him.

Yesterday on Hoffman Street, chalk markings indicated where the shell casings had fallen. Two were close to the building. There were 10 in a cluster in the middle of the sidewalk and two more about 30 feet away.

No one answered the door at the house - a recently painted brick rowhouse with a relatively new door and windows - but Colarulo said officers executing a search warrant had found two loaded semiautomatic handguns and two plastic bags of crack cocaine inside.

The report of the incident said the injured officer suffered a laceration below his eye. It did not indicate whether he required medical treatment.

Both officers have been placed on administrative duty while Internal Affairs and the District Attorney's Office investigate the shooting, the standard practice in such cases.

Colarulo said that while there have been eight fatal shootings by police this year, there were 12 in the city by this time last year. Altogether, there were 22 fatal shootings involving Philadelphia police in 2006, the most in the city for any year since 1980 and more than in any other of the nation's 10 largest cities last year.