SALEM, Ore. (KOIN) — First, Chris Valentine heard the yelling. The he heard the shots.
“It was pop, pop, pop,” Valentine said. “It was really quick.”
The commotion happened early Saturday morning. When Valentine first heard the altercation between state police and a driver that happened at the end of a pursuit, he dropped to the floor. Then he yelled at his wife and kids to get down as well. When Valentine and his wife went outside, they found officers searching the local yards.
“That’s when I realized there was another officer just ahead with a shotgun in his hands pointed down toward the neighbors yard,” Valentine said.
Police say Timothy J. George, 29, is a person of interest after shots were fired at the end of a police chase in Valentine’s Salem cul de sac, though they didn’t specify he was the driver in the pursuit. A Polk County deputy tried to pull over a 1996 blue Honda Civic along Wallace Road in Salem in the early hours of Saturday. The driver then took off and a chase went through West Salem into Northeast Salem.
The shots were fired at the intersection of Oak Park Drive and Mooreland Avenue NE. The driver fled the scene in the Honda, which was abandoned not far away.
Sandra Freeman was letting her cat out when she saw the pursuit.
“It wasn’t quite even daylight yet,” Freeman said, “but it was a dark-colored smaller vehicle.”
It is unclear if anyone was wounded when the shots were fired and who, exactly, fired the shots. The Oregon State Police labeled this an officer-involved shooting.
George is 6-feet tall, about 150 pounds with black hair and green eyes with a tattoo on his right forearm.
Anyone with information is asked to call 911.
Filed under: Crime, Editor's Pick, Headlines, Marion County, Oregon
