FEATURED Officer-involved gunfight ends in intruder's death at mobile home park

Police had the scene of a fatal officer-involved shooting taped off by mid-morning Wednesday.

A gunfight between police officers and an intruder at a Longview mobile home park resulted in the man’s death early Wednesday morning. For some of the responding deputies, it was their second dangerous confrontation of the night.

According to Longview police, officers were dispatched to the El Patio Mobile Home Park in the 600 block of California Way at 2:52 a.m. on a report of an unwanted male subject, whose name and age were not released Wednesday.

According to a Longview PD press release, the man displayed a firearm, fled and then forced his way into an occupied residence. The occupants escaped safely, but then the intruder began shooting at officers, which included Cowlitz County sheriff’s deputies.

“Officers returned fire and the subject was pronounced deceased,” according to the press release, which did not report how many shots were fired or any other details.

It was not immediately clear whether the man died from law enforcement shots or took his own life, according to Longview PD.

El Patio resident Justin Hale said the man jumped over the fence adjacent to his unit and ran through his driveway. The gunshots woke Hale up, he said.

“It was like a firework being let off in my driveway,” Hale said. “It was crazy.”

Another resident, Richard Burnett, said he was awakened by two shots around 3 a.m. and heard more than one person running down the Mobile Home Park’s pathway. He said he heard five shots altogether and that a family lived in the unit which was broken into.

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Cowlitz County Coroner Tim Davidson said an autopsy is planned for 2 p.m. Thursday, and he won’t be able to confirm the man’s identity before then. He could only say the dead man is white.

The Clark County Major Crimes Unit will conduct the investigation. It’s typical for an outside agency to investigate officer-involved shootings. A Longview officer and a sheriff’s deputy have been placed on paid administrative leave, which is standard procedure in officer-involved shootings. Their names have not been released.

The shooting was the second violent encounter of the night for some sheriff’s deputies, who late Tuesday night arrested a Longview man on allegations that he threatened to kill deputies and hit a truck several times with a large brush ax in the 100 block of Nibblet Way in the Beacon Hill area.

Deputies booked Boyd Scott Lawrence, 53, on suspicion of second-degree assault, felony harassment, second-degree malicious mischief, resisting arrest and reckless endangerment, according to Sheriff Mark Nelson.

Deputies were called out on a report of a man coming out of his apartment wielding an ax and yelling at men who were working on a truck in the apartment’s parking lot, Nelson said. Lawrence hit the truck two or three times and was still swinging the ax when deputies arrived on scene. He told deputies he was going to kill them, Nelson said.

Lawrence fled into his apartment, Nelson said, where he again threatened deputies. Deputies shot at him with a beanbag round, and “after a fairly intense tussle,” took him into custody. One deputy was wounded in the hand, Nelson said.

The incident happened just hours before Longview officers and sheriff’s deputies were traded fire at El Patio Mobile Home Park, and included some of the same deputies involved in the ax incident, Nelson said.

“It was a heck of a night, between this incident and the shooting,” Nelson said. “The guys were commenting how the night before had been, there was nothing going on ... then you have one of those nights where you can’t have enough people working. Sometimes you just go from one crazy call to another.”