all right anybody not ready all right good morning I'm uh Pinellas County Sheriff Bob walteri with these St Petersburg blue Chief Anthony Holloway this is a Pinellas County the use of deadly force task force investigation uh because there was a shooting by the St Petersburg Police Officer I'm going to run through uh for you uh what happened here this morning again as always this is preliminary information as we know it now it's all subject to change it's fluid it's an active investigation ongoing and I'm going to give you the best information that I have this is a little bit of a complicated scene because of what happened how it all played out I'll run through for you as uh a little bit of limited information situation because we still have a lot of interviews to do there's a lot of people involved in this so the incident happened and began at about 11 50 p.m last night St Petersburg Police were called to 2 15 29th Street South which is a residence about two blocks to the South behind me here there was a woman and her boyfriend and her child had come to this residence to stay with a man by the name of Jared j-e-r-e-d his middle name is Romeo and his last name is Fenderson f-e-n-d-e-r-s-o-n his date of birth is 11 196. Fenderson lives here knew this woman she and her boyfriend and child were transient didn't have a place to stay he said they'd come stay for a while with him at this location this is a location it's a big house divided into several different rooms so it's kind of a rooming house with at least six different rooms everybody has a room number he has one room within this house so there's multiple stories and multiple corridors or hallways within the house so they came yesterday and began staying with him there when they got there yesterday he showed them that he had a firearm they weren't concerned about it he didn't threaten anybody with it in reference that the firearm was for protection that they were safe because he had a gun again didn't really think anything of it they go through the day yesterday they're there last night uh in his room uh he had left and they were in his bed so he had the man the woman and the child in the bed he came back in got upset because they were in his bed made threats to them and then took the gun and pointed it at them he committed three counts of an aggravated assault with a firearm on the child and the two adults they called St Pete Police I came up here to the intersection of First Avenue South and 29th Street behind me here and met with an officer explained what happened there was probable cause to arrest Fenderson on the aggravated assault charges other St Petersburg officers went to the home when they got to the whole uh Fenderson came out and set up a perimeter around the house try to get a plan as to how they were going to handle this he came out with a gun and began firing he fired rounds at the officers and one of the officers returned fire that officer is Hayden h-a-y-d-e-n last name is Tuggle t-u-g-g-l-e officer tuggles patrol officer besides of this district and he was one of the first ones here after officer Tuggle returned fire he did not strike Fenderson and Fenderson went back into the house other officers arrived along with supervisors they set up a perimeter and began to communicate with Fenderson trying to get him to come out he fired some additional rounds inside the house uh at about 1 30 this morning the shift Commander decided based upon those additional rounds being fired that it required a SWAT call out the St Petersburg Police Department SWAT team arrived is they were arrived arriving and began to set up he came back out again and fired more rounds at that point the swan officers were in place they exchanged some gunfire with him one of the snipers from the SWAT team had been set up to the South and he was able to shoot one time strike Fenderson in the chest the other two shooters that I'll identify one I'm not going to identify because he's another cover detective who serves on the SWAT team but the other two were Robert snipe as s-n-i-p-p-e and the sniper who actually who's round hit Fenderson is Officer Quentin The q-u-e-n-t-i-n Hyphen Lee and last name is Morgan m-o-r-g-a-n so Officer Morgan fired from a sniper rifle struck Fenderson as he was firing at the officers Fenderson treated back into the house if you will the apartment building uh in a hallway and was on the ground in there a SWAT team entry team went in found him on the ground and I brought him out he was treated by Saint Pete fire rescue and transported to Bayfront so he is in uh stable about critical condition it is not life-threatening he shot with a rifle round in the upper chest area but he uh by all accounts is expected to survive so we're processing the scene we're conducting the interviews conducting the investigation that's what we know now I'll answer any questions that you have but that's pretty much what we know can you take us through the evacuation we know about half a dozen people would take were evacuated from the house oh yeah yeah everybody in the house was evacuated certainly there are other people living in there and and as well so there were a number of people evacuated of course we would always do in this type of a situation uh where you got somebody that's firing rounds and probably people from the area itself there's probably a neighborhood evacuation to some degree did they just exit through a door or yeah they came out the door yeah they all kind of came walking running out as the shots were being fired or some inside when the exchange of gunfire was happening somewhere inside and it was staggered as people were coming out so they kind of evacuated throughout right I mean they were in the gunshots and they start coming out and realizing that they got to get out of there because there's bad things happen and then from the street could you just kind of um talk about the danger outside the home at that time well yeah I mean you know luckily it's uh late at night early in the morning and the officers weren't Physicians of cover across the street the sniper was down the street uh there was nobody on the street he came out and you know people were in danger because he was firing out the front door and firing across the street at where the officers were um and you know luckily nobody else was injured uh we're still again conducting the investigation trying to figure out where all the rounds went um you know very easily could have gone into a house across the street the way he was fired he just came out and was just randomly firing uh we do have a photograph of the gun I gave it to our Pio people they'll send it out to you it looks like to me it looks like it's a Springfield nine millimeter uh probably had somewhere 10 15 round magazine somewhere in that range but again we're gonna get a search warrant for the his house in there or his uh apartment in the building to see if there's any more guns any more ammunition any more magazines uh I don't know if he reloaded or what he did but he fired a lot of rounds he was randomly firing inside then came out and at least two possibly three different times there was a volley a gunfire exchange between him and the officers and finally unfortunately Officer Morgan was able to strike him the last time which is when he went down and were able to see Petersburg Police were able to stop him from hurting anybody you talked about the aggravated assault charges on the woman man and child did he strike them how did he use it so an aggravated assault is not a striking is in this case it's with a firearm it's basically a threat with a firearm that puts somebody in fear that they're going to be shot and the way he was acting the things he said uh and he made a comment to somebody that he was going to kill the kid he made a lot of uh statements to the fact that he wanted to kill people so he was seeing things while he was pointing the gun at them and even subsequently and during the time that they had him on the phone where the officers had him on the phone he was making threatening statements any idea of what set him off if you will overnight everything seemed normal when the when these visitors went to bed and then so you know what we see time and again is is that in part of your question and you're correct is something sets these people off usually they have some sort of a grievance they have some sort of uh if something instigates it something initiates it in this case for whatever reason the thing that set him off was it doesn't make any sense you know maybe it will to some degree as we get into the investigation but he invited them over they didn't have a place to stay it's a one-room apartment within this multi-room residence he's got one bed in there and he comes back and is ticked off because they're in his bed sleeping well where does he think they're going to sleep right so uh it doesn't but apparently that's what set him off and why he pulled the gun on them started threatening them and told them that if they didn't get out that he was going to shoot him and then of course they got scared and left and did the right thing to call the police so it appeared to set him off was the fact that he invited him over they didn't have a place to stay and they were in his bed he knew them prior to this or they were yes yeah he knew the woman and the guy with the suspect was in his underwear during a lot of this standoff was was did he return home in that state of undress or did he just get angry and take his clothes out like do we know about that I don't know the answer to that I don't know I don't know that so um you know I don't anticipate probably releasing any additional information until we get further into the investigation if anything changes we'll let you know anything's substantial that you need to know we'll point it out but I don't anticipate this is gonna there's a a lot of witnesses uh 12 SWAT team members is probably 20 25 Witnesses need to be interviewed which is going to take most of the day today so I really don't anticipate putting uh much out during the rest of the day today perhaps tomorrow and if anything uh changes what you know