Man Shot After Threatening Daughter With a Gun

A 26-year-old man has been shot after he abducted his partner and their children and then threatened his three-year-old daughter with a gun.

The man allegedly forced his 23-year-old partner and their two young children – a three-year-old girl and seven-month-old boy – into a car at gunpoint before leading police on a high-speed chase through Adelaide on Monday night.

Witnesses say that they saw the man and the woman in an altercation in Cumberland Park, a suburb in Adelaide’s south, at about 9pm and tried to intervene, but the man threatened them with a firearm before taking his victims to a white sedan.

It took an hour before police located the car as they initially did not have a description of it until they found it speeding down Marion Road in South Plympton at 10.20pm. They then monitored the man’s activity from a helicopter before tracking the man to Port Adelaide – around 17 kilometres away.

Police waited at Grand Junction and South Road where they had placed road spikes to slow the man down, yet the man continued to flee despite the damage to his car.

Police said the man then turned toward the city, speeding past Adelaide’s Rundle Mall, before officers forced him to stop by ramming the vehicle at about 11.30pm. Police then surrounded the car, but the man turned his weapon toward the three-year-old girl cowering in her mother’s lap in the front seat.

Police fired a single shot, which injured the man as officers swarmed the vehicle and rescued the hostages. The woman was seen huddling under an officers arm after going out of the passenger seat as her baby was carried to safety. She and the children were immediately taken to hospital for observation. The woman suffered minor injuries from an earlier assault, while her two children miraculously escaped uninjured.

Armed officers went to the car, with one scrambling over the hood to secure the gunman. “They come all together from everywhere, they surrounded every door, every window,” Ammar Hady told Nine News.

“They are trying to open it, he wouldn’t open the car, like any doors or anything, they smashed with the smashing hammers and opened the door then they got the kid, I heard one shot,” he added.

“It will be alleged that he threatened the three-year-old girl with a firearm and that’s when a decision was made for a police officer to fire at the offender,” Assistant Commissioner Paul Dickson told reporters.

The man was taken to the Royal Adelaide Hospital, receiving treatment for non-life threatening gunshot wound and is now in a stable condition. He is still under police guard.

Major Crime is investigating the incident.

Source: Dailymail.co.uk