Police shot and killed a man driving a pickup truck and wounded his female passenger Friday evening in Vassalboro after the man intentionally rammed a police cruiser, according to Maine State Police.

The woman was taken to Maine Medical Center in Portland in critical condition with a gunshot wound, said Steve McCausland, spokesman for the Maine Department of Public Safety.

The shooting happened shortly before 5 p.m. on Arnold Road, which is near the Natanis Golf Course and Webber Pond in the Kennebec County town near Augusta.

Police had been called to the area looking for a pickup truck involved in daytime burglaries, during one of which a homeowner was present, said McCausland. He said the shooting happened after a state police cruiser was rammed by the truck.

No police were injured in the incident, said McCausland. He said Friday night that police were not immediately identifying the two people who were shot.

The three officers involved were state police Lt. Scott Ireland, state Trooper Jeff Parks and Vassalboro Police Chief Mark Brown. As is standard procedure, the officers were put on administrative leave with pay.

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McCausland said the Maine Attorney General’s Office will investigate the incident because police were involved in the shooting. The office was sending an investigator to the scene, he said.

It was the latest police-involved shooting of the new year in Maine. On Jan. 22, a Waldoboro man was killed in a shootout with police who were investigating a report of a domestic disturbance at his home. An officer was injured in that incident.

At the time of the Waldoboro shootout, the Attorney General’s Office said there had been 73 officer-involved shootings in Maine since 2007. Of those shootings, 36 resulted in death.

There were six officer-involved shootings in Maine in 2016, including two that resulted in death, according to figures supplied by the Attorney General’s Office.


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