Des Moines police say the officer who shot and killed a man last night was off-duty at the time. Police received a report that a woman was being beaten by her estranged boyfriend and he’d fired a shotgun in a northside Des Moines neighborhood. Police spokesman sergeant Bruce Elrod says on-duty cops headed to the scene, but the department also called a nearby grocery store where officer Michael McBride was moonlighting as a security guard.It was so close, they called the officer to let him know what was going on. Dispatchers knew a shot had been fired and the suspect ran off, so they called so the officer wouldn’t be guarding the store and run into the fleeing armed suspect. Officer McBride joined the chase of the suspect, 22-year-old Carlos Rodriquez. Rodriquez stepped out from behind a tree and shot at the officers from about 20 feet, and nobody knows why neither was hit. Officer McBride fired back, four shots in all, and after Rodriquez ran away he collapsed minutes later. He was dead at the scene, hit by two bullets. McBride is on administrative leave until investigation of the case is complete.
