Fort Worth police kill man who wouldn't lower gun

By Tim Madigan

tmadigan@star-telegram.com

FORT WORTH -- On a quiet Christmas morning in southwest Fort Worth, the popping noises initially sounded like someone at the front door. But when Debbie Smith and her family looked outside, a tragic confrontation between Fort Worth police and a neighbor in his 30s was about to end in violence.

At about 10 a.m., police responded to reports of a man firing a weapon into the air. When they arrived at his one-story duplex just off Alta Mesa Boulevard, the suspect turned his automatic handgun on the officers, striking their patrol cars with bullets.

After a brief standoff, he charged from his home with a gun to his head and was fatally shot when he ignored commands to lower the weapon, police said.

The man, described by neighbors as a troubled veteran of the Iraq war, was dead at the scene. Just before he was shot, he screamed that he was combat-trained, a police spokesman said.

The man was identified Sunday night as Christopher Johnson, 29. No officers or bystanders were injured.

"It was a Christmas tragedy," said Allen Smith, Debbie Smith's 15-year-old son.

Debbie Smith said she and her family saw two police cars pull up shortly after the first popping sounds Sunday morning. Several other police vehicles followed. Smith said it is clear that the man fired at officers as they pulled up. Neighbors were also close to the man's house, apparently attempting to calm him, Smith said.

Then the man sprinted out of his house with a gun to his temple and raced onto a neighbor's lawn.

"He didn't walk out of the house," Smith said. "It was like in a movie. He was saying something to the police. The policeman had a rifle and he was still coming so [the officer] shot him and that was it."

Smith said one of the neighbors who had been trying to calm the man, an older woman, was the first to reach his body and kicked the weapon away.

Paramedics tried to revive the man with CPR for several minutes after the shooting, Smith said.

His body remained in the grass near the busy Fort Worth thoroughfare for several hours.

Police did not release the name of the officers involved in the shooting.

The officers will be encouraged "to take time off to be with family and friends to recover from incidents such as these," a police statement said. Police did not release any other information Sunday.

Tim Madigan, 817-390-7544

Twitter: @tsmadigan