Police: No officers injured during officer-involved shooting

PHOENIX (KSAZ) - A 23-year-old man's family didn't want to show their faces and were in shock over what happened early Friday morning, but they still spoke out in an effort to clear him.

"Twenty-three-years-old, not a trouble maker, never been in jail," the suspect's brother said. "The situation is they say he had a knife. I need to see proof of that because I don't believe he never carried with him anything."

Police say the 23-year-old was walking down the street when he was approached by a Phoenix police officer around 3 a.m. The officer believed he matched the description of a suspect wanted in a recent armed robbery in that same neighborhood.

"The officer pulled over to make contact with the suspect, got out, made that verbal contact, the suspect immediately began to be confrontational with the officer, refused to show his hands when given those commands," Sgt. Vince Lewis said. "Then became aggressive with the officer, advanced on the officer, the officer fired at the suspect."

Sarah Geiger heard two gunshots, one of which may have hit a neighbor's wall. Geiger also saw the 23-year-old sitting on the stretcher before he was loaded into an ambulance.

"They literally woke up up," she said. "Pow, pow. See that tire mark? It was right in that area that the stretcher was. I saw him sitting down on it."

The 23-year-old is expected to survive and his brother is grateful for that and eager to get his side of the story.

"The problem he have he doesn't, don't sleep at night," he said. "He sleeps in the morning. He probably went to Circle K to buy something to drink or something like that, but the cop, he probably didn't give him a chance, you know."