A woman was shot and killed during an altercation with a police officer Monday night in Baytown, Texas, after she resisted arrest and grabbed the officer's Taser, police said.
An officer in Baytown, a city of about 76,000 people east of Houston, was patrolling an apartment complex when he recognized a woman who lived there that he knew had prior warrants, police said.
When police tried to arrest the woman, whom they identified as Pamela Turner, 44, she resisted arrest, said Lt. Steve Dorris, a Baytown police spokesman.
The officer was "forced to deploy his Taser" on the woman, but it wasn't "effective," Dorris said. The woman grabbed the Taser and used it on the officer who was trying to arrest her.
Turner's actions "forced the officer to draw his duty weapon and fire multiple rounds at the suspect, who was struck at least one time," Dorris said.
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She was declared dead at the scene, police said. The Harris County district attorney's office is assisting in the investigation.
The fatal incident was recorded on social media and went viral, with some commentators questioning why the incident ended in the woman's death.
In a Snapchat video of the incident, Turner told the officer that she was pregnant. Police told NBC News on Tuesday that she was not pregnant, although they did not specify how they knew, and autopsy results have not been released.
Her family told NBC's Houston affiliate KPRC that she had two children, both in their 20s.
Witnesses at the apartment complex told KPRC that the woman was "not a bad person" and that she would "just walk around, smoke her cigarettes and walk her dogs."
Another neighbor, Taylin Inniss, said that she heard the shots and that when she learned that someone had been killed at her apartment complex, she did not believe it.
"They must've had a couple of words. Things went a whole different way, and he shot her, and I really feel for the family, and I hope they get some type of justice," Inniss said. "I just pray for them, honestly, because life is short nowadays."
Baytown police are not naming the officer who shot the woman. They said he has worked as an officer for 11 years.
