Mayor Stanley: Rally behind slain and wounded officers
Joplin Mayor Ryan Stanley is urging residents to pull together in the wake of shootings that left one police officer dead and two others badly wounded.
Stanley said Wednesday that support would be just as people did 11 years ago when a massive tornado devastated the city.
Joplin Police Chief Sloan Rowland says the officer killed Tuesday was Cpl. Benjamin Cooper, a husband, and father of two daughters. Cooper was a veteran officer of the Joplin Police Department, starting his career in 2003 before transferring to a sheriff’s department in Colorado. Cooper returned to the Joplin Police Department in 2013 and was promoted to Corporal in 2016.
Another officer was hospitalized in critical condition and a third was in serious condition.
An emotional Mayor Stanley urged Joplin residents to come together behind the slain and injured officers and their families.
“Please be present, show up, engage, and let the nation and world see, just like after our tornado, how we respond to tragedy as a community. We know how to pull together in love,” Stanley said.
Authorities said more information about the shooting was expected to be released later Wednesday, but Stanley said it began as a “routine” case.
“It makes you really try to appreciate, try to respect, try to understand what our brave men and women have to do every day as they respond to the normal, and then not knowing what will happen,” Stanley said.
The officers responded to a disturbance about 1:30 p.m. Tuesday outside a store at the Northpark Crossing shopping center. Shots were exchanged and two officers were wounded.
The suspected shooter, who died in an exchange of gunfire with police, was identified as 40-year-old Anthony Felix.
Felix stole a police car and fled, police said, before wrecking the car and fleeing on foot. Officers chased him to a street near an apartment complex and residential area in central Joplin, where another officer and Felix were shot. Police have not specified which officer shot Felix.
“This was a violent and unwarranted attack on our officers and is indicative of the rise in violence against law enforcement officers we are witnessing nationwide and it has to stop,” said Chief Rowland. “We are a large family at the Joplin Police Department–a very large extended family–and today we are hurting.”
The Missouri State Highway Patrol is assisting with the investigation.
The Associated Press contributed to this report
