UPDATE: March 13, 9 p.m.
Deptford Police Officer Robert Shisler continues to recover after a gunfight on Friday. Mayor Paul Medany said 27-year-old Officer Robert Shisler is scheduled for one more surgery: "Cooper Trauma and everybody surrounding him has just been absolutely fantastic."
Medany said this is just the latest example of the gun epidemic in America, adding things need to change fast.
Original story follows
DEPTFORD TWP., N.J. (KYW Newsradio) — A police officer is hospitalized and a suspect is dead after a Friday afternoon shootout.
The New Jersey Attorney General's Office says the shooting happened around 1 p.m. in Deptford when Police Officer Robert Shisler was conducting a pedestrian stop on Delsea Drive.
They say a foot chase broke out between Shisler and 24-year-old Mitchell Negron Jr., which then led to a gunfight. Both men were shot.
Witnesses say Negron took off, ran up about a block on Delsea Drive, made a right onto Cobblestone Lane, then turned down Doman Avenue, where he apparently collapsed and died outside of Danny Howell’s home.
Shisler, who was shot in the leg, was rushed to Cooper University Hospital. He is out of surgery and in stable condition.
Officials have not yet disclosed what led to the shooting.
Police held two crime scenes through Friday afternoon: one at Delsea Drive and Central Avenue, and the other at Cobblestone Lane and Doman Avenue. The state attorney general is now conducting the investigation, as is standard for all police shootings.
Howell said police officers came knocking at his door, asking if they could comb through video captured by his doorbell camera to find evidence to help explain what happened to the man.
“Someone must have ran down here, ran down the street,” Howell said. “And they called me on the phone, knocked on my front door, went through the Ring first. And then my cameras alerted me. My dogs are going off. And they asked me to search the cameras and all that stuff, to give ’em the footage of exactly how he got down there. So I have all that footage. I gave them to the officers, to the prosecutor's office, so they're reviewing that.”
Neighbor Nancy Cockerill said she was very concerned when she heard about the incident from another neighbor. She called her daughter’s school to make sure she would not be bused home and released into a crime scene.
“You know, scared — we didn't know if somebody was on the loose, trying to break into homes, trying to hide. So I immediately called the principal at Deptford High and I asked to see if the bus could be rerouted to another location and not let them off, or keep my child behind. So the principal kept them behind.”
Stay with KYW Newsradio for the latest on this developing story.