ST. LOUIS _ The man shot by a St. Louis police officer Thursday after he allegedly shot another officer in the leg was identified Friday as a 26-year-old man from St. Louis.
Rodnell Cotton was shot around noon Thursday at Delmar and Josephine Baker boulevards, one block east of Grand Center, behind Circus Flora's tent, police said.
The shooting happened after U.S. Marshals aided by plainclothes St. Louis police officers were attempting to arrest Cotton on a federal weapons charge. He was also wanted on a parole violation connected to 2013 convictions for voluntary manslaughter and armed criminal action.
Police said Cotton was driving in a vehicle with a woman passenger Thursday when marshals converged on him near the intersection of Vandeventer Avenue and Dr. Martin Luther King. The officers deflated Cottons' tires with a spike strip, but he sped off only stopping to let the woman out of the car, police said.
Eventually, according to police, Cotton's vehicle hit a curb and he got out of the vehicle and ran, followed by an officer on foot. Police said Cotton dropped a duffel bag as he ran.
After a short foot chase, Cotton turned and exchanged gunfire with the officer, striking him in the upper thigh, police said. Another officer then approached, and saw that the officer was shot and that Cotton was still armed, and shot Cotton, police said. Cotton was pronounced dead at the scene.
Police recovered a .40-caliber semiautomatic pistol near Cotton's body, police said Friday. Investigators also found a loaded .223 AR-style pistol and a drum magazine with 60 cartridges in the dropped duffel bag, police said.
The injured officer was sent to SSM Health St. Louis University Hospital. He was conscious and talking.
Court records show Cotton was convicted in 2013 for a role in the shooting death of 17-year-old Rahmel McNeil, the captain of Sumner High School's football team.
Court documents say that McNeil and Cotton were in a fight on Sept. 24, 2010, when a 16-year-old spectator, Terron Pool, pulled out a handgun and shot McNeil in the chest several times.
The shooter, Pool, was found guilty by a jury of second-degree murder in 2013 and sentenced to life in prison.
Cotton pleaded guilty to voluntary manslaughter and armed criminal action for his role and was sentenced to 10 years in prison in 2013. He was released in June 2017.
The officer who was shot on Thursday is 37 years old and has been with St. Louis police for 14 years. The officer who returned fire is 47 years old and has been with the department for 17 years.
An eyewitness near the shooting Thursday, Meghan Homa, said she saw multiple police cars racing through the area before spotting a man dressed in black pants and a black sweatshirt half-running down Washington Boulevard.
The man then squeezed through a fence next to the lot of Circus Flora, she said. Homa said she saw an officer wearing a bulletproof vest follow after him.
"He was chasing him and shouting at him," she told the St. Louis Post-Dispatch. "Like: Stop running!"
Homa said she saw the man and officer circle around a trailer on the lot before the officer shot the man.
A crowd of about 35 bystanders gathered at the shooting scene Thursday afternoon, including several who claimed to know the man who had died.
"You didn't have to kill him," said a visibly distraught woman who identified herself as the dead man's mother at the crime scene "You could've shot him a couple of times; you didn't have to kill him."
The shooting marks the sixth time a St. Louis Metropolitan police officer shot at someone in 2019, and the first time this year that a St. Louis police officer has been shot in the line of duty. There were 13 shootings by city officers last year.
