Police investigating deadly stabbing & shooting in Central Austin

Interim Austin Police Chief Brian Manley says they got the call Friday morning after 6:30. A man was in some sort of a disturbance with a woman on the 5000 block of Lynwood in North Austin.

“The caller indicated that the male subject involved in this disturbance was possibly on drugs,” Manley said.

Sonya Rodriguez who works down the street says fighting at that apartment complex is nothing new. “I’ve been working here for about 2 years and there’s always a couple that’s fighting outside the location across the street from the fire house and we’ve called the cops on them multiple times because we assumed it was going to get violent,” Rodriguez said. “Yelling at each other, like yelling at people on the La Mancha patio, like yelling at the employees here as they’re walking inside.”

“I’ve lived here for 11 years. Never had any real problem with the people across the street, occasionally an officer would show up,” said neighbor Bob Green.

Austin Police describe the location as a “group home.” Manley says the caller was on the phone with dispatchers when the man stabbed the woman. Officers arrived at 6:49. Manley says the officer’s body-worn camera shows the woman on the ground and a black man in his 50’s appears to be walking around with a knife.

“The officer gives repeated commands to this individual to ‘drop it, drop it.’ This individual refuses to comply. And he takes additional aggressive acts toward the female victim in this incident and our officer fires his weapon,” Manley said.

The suspect went down. Chief Manley says there was a lengthy struggle to get the suspect in custody.

Officers then started treating the man and applied tourniquets to the woman...but unfortunately she was pronounced dead on scene.

The suspect was taken to the hospital.

“Drugs are an isssue you know and we’re always going to be living with that,” Green said. “The police do I think a hell of a good job of doing this, they’ve got a tough job I surely wouldn’t want to have it.”

Manley says the officer involved wasn’t physically hurt. And he’s a 23-year veteran of the department.

“It is with obviously great sadness that we lost someone today but I can say from what I understand our officers did everything they could when they got here to put an end to the threat the suspect posed to this victim,” Manley said.

Police say there was some sort of relationship between the man and the woman, they just werent sure what it was this morning.

As of that press conference this morning the suspect was in critical condition after surgery. The officer has been placed on administrative leave during the investigation