Police release report on Raleigh chase, shooting

Raleigh, N.C. — A police officer thought a colleague was wounded by a razor-wielding man a week ago when he shot the man, police said in their preliminary report of the incident.

In a Monday report to City Manager Russell Allen, Police Chief Harry Dolan outlined the sequence of events that led to Renford Butler's Aug. 5 shooting. Butler, 34, of Durham, was critically wounded after being shot twice by Officer J. Bloodworth.

The incident began when cab driver Ahmed Osman was robbed near Dorothea Dix Hospital, police said. Osman wasn't injured, but the robber fled in his taxi.

An alert was issued for the stolen cab, and a police sergeant directing traffic on Poole Road spotted the vehicle and initiated a chase.

Radio transmissions between officers and the 911 dispatch center described a chase that reached speeds of 90 mph as it wound around St. Augustine's College and the Oakwood neighborhood and into downtown.

The chase proceeded down Lane Street at 55 mph before the taxi slammed into a white van near the intersection of Lane and Dawson streets. The carjacker then jumped from the taxi and tried to flee, and he waved a straight razor at officers as they cornered him, police said.

"The suspect refused to follow the commands of the officers (to drop the razor) and began yelling that he was not going to jail and that the officers were going to have to kill him," Dolan wrote in the report.

Officer J.R. Moore tried to tackle the man from behind and narrowly escaped injury when the man swiped at him with the razor, the report said. Bloodworth thought Moore had been injured and fired two shots when the man turned and began advancing toward him, the report said.

No officers were injured in the incident.

Bloodworth, who joined the Raleigh Police Department in June 2002, is on paid administrative duty while the State Bureau of Investigation and the department’s Internal Affairs Unit investigate the shooting. Such investigations are routine in officer-involved shootings.