San Antonio

Autopsy: Man Killed Self During Airport Shootout With Police

San Antonio's airport is on lockdown after a reported police shooting, but police say there is no "active threat to the public."

A handgun-wielding man who opened fire outside the San Antonio airport died from a self-inflicted gunshot wound, not from police gunfire as officials initially said, according to a police statement Friday.

On Thursday, Police Chief William McManus said the man was fatally shot outside a San Antonio International Airport terminal hours after he’d shot at vehicles from a highway overpass in the northern part of the Texas city.

In the Friday police statement, the Bexar County Medical Examiner’s Office concluded that an autopsy on the man and evidence examined at the shooting scene showed the man had shot himself after receiving a non-fatal wound from Officer John Maines’ gun.

Police continued to withhold the identity of the suspect until the medical examiner could establish it conclusively.

The city’s airport was placed on lockdown after police got a call around 2:30 p.m. Thursday about a car driving the wrong way on a road at the airport, McManus said Thursday. On Friday, police said Maines stopped the car and confronted the suspect, who jumped from his car and opened fire.

No one else was hit by gunfire.

The shooter, who was not identified, was a man in his 40s who police have interacted with before and had a history of mental illness, McManus said.

The shooter is believed to be the same person who earlier in the day opened fire from a busy overpass in northern San Antonio, McManus said. The man matched the description given on the man seen shooting from an overpass, and the shell casings left behind matched the .45 caliber handgun used at the airport.

Copyright Associated Press
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