FRESNO, Calif. (KSEE/KGPE) – UPDATE: A suspect remains barricaded inside a northeast Fresno Save Mart supermarket at First Street and Nees Avenue early Friday morning.
Clovis Unified School District says Kastner Intermediate will be delayed Friday morning for two hours pending additional updates on the situation.
According to CUSD Kastner Intermediate campus, including all other programs, is closed until at least two hours after their normal start time of 7:40 a.m. This includes all drop-off, walk-in, and school bus arrivals, and zero-period classes held before the school day’s regular start. No other schools are impacted
Deputies say it started around 7:00 p.m Thursday night after an off-duty deputy identified a suspect vehicle wanted in relation to a residential burglary in southern Fresno County near the Macy’s in Fresno’s River Park shopping center.
According to Assistant Sheriff John Zanoni, an off-duty deputy identified a suspect vehicle wanted in relation to a residential burglary in southern Fresno County near the Macy’s in Fresno’s River Park shopping center. The deputy saw the wanted suspects leaving the store and heading towards the vehicle, authorities say.
The off-duty deputy contacted detectives who responded to the shopping center, Zanoni says. As they responded, two of the three suspects ran back into the Macy’s store and the third jumped into the vehicle, officials say. As deputies attempted to keep the suspect from leaving the parking lot in the vehicle, Zanoni says the suspect used the vehicle to ram several patrol cars.
“During that, one of our deputies had feared for his life and his safety and we had an officer-involved shooting at this location,” Zanoni says.
It is unclear if any of the gunfire struck the suspect.
The suspect was able to escape the area and authorities pursued him. The short pursuit ended at First and Nees avenues before the suspect fled on foot to the Save Mart supermarket.
According to Tony Botti with the Fresno County Sheriff’s Office the two suspects who ran back into the Macy’s, a man and a woman, were taken into custody. The outstanding suspect remains in the Save Mart as of Thursday evening.
The supermarket has been evacuated. Deputies are utilizing drones to monitor the suspect and there is a law enforcement helicopter overhead in the area.
“The good news is we had nobody in the public injured, none of our deputies were injured, so the primary priority right now is getting this guy into custody,” Botti said.
