ST. PETERSBURG, FL — An armed man is in critical condition after being shot during a three-hour standoff with police at a St. Petersburg boarding house, authorities said.
Just before midnight, officers with the St. Petersburg Police Department responded to reports of a man firing a gun at the multi-family residence at 215 29th Street S., according to a Pinellas County Sheriff’s Office news release.
The suspect was later identified as 26-year-old Jerid Fenderson.
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Fenderson’s victims — a homeless woman that he knew, as well as her boyfriend and her son — were staying with him in his one-room unit in the home, Sheriff Bob Gualtieri said during a news conference.
He went out Wednesday evening and when he returned, he found his visitors, who arrived Wednesday, sleeping in his bed. This upset him, and he got his gun, went outside and fired it, the sheriff’s office said.
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He went back into his bedroom, threatening the family and pointing his gun at them.
While threatening them, Fenderson said that he “was going to kill the kid,” Gualtieri said. “He made statements that he wanted to kill people.”
After police arrived, he went outside with his gun and fired at officers. Officer Hayden Tuggle returned fire but didn’t hit Fenderson, the sheriff’s office said.
As more officers arrived, they called Fenderson, who was back in the home, trying to get him to come back outside. In response, he fired more shots inside the residence.
When the SPPD SWAT team responded to the home around 1:30 a.m., Fenderson left the building again and shot at officers.
SWAT Officer Quentin-Lee Morgan, Officer Robert Snippe and an unnamed undercover detective exchanged gunfire with Fenderson, the sheriff’s office said.
Fenderson was hit once in the chest by Morgan and went back into the home, where he was found by the SWAT team, according to SCSO.
He was brought to Bayfront Health St. Petersburg in stable but critical condition and is expected to survive.
There were “two to three” gunfire exchanges between the suspect and responding officers during the standoff, Gualtieri said.
“He was firing out the front door and firing across the street where the officers were,” he said. “It very easily could have gone into a house across the street the way he was firing. … He was just firing randomly.”
“Luckily,” the shootout happened overnight, the sheriff added. “There was nobody on the street.”
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Fenderson faces three charges of aggravated assault with a deadly weapon. Additional charges of attempted murder of a law enforcement officer are pending.
The Pinellas County Use of Deadly Force Task Force, which formed in 2020, will investigate the police-involved shooting.
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