UPDATE, MAY 4 (3:35 p.m.):
Reports are conflicting as the story unfolds but Baltimore Police are now saying – in an official statement on Twitter – that the suspect in question was not shot:
The reports of a man being shot at North and Pennsylvania Ave are NOT true. Officers have arrested a man for a handgun at the location
— Baltimore Police (@BaltimorePolice) May 4, 2015
Following Fox News on-air correspondent Mike Tobin's interview with show host Sheperd Smith, the network heard from other witnesses of what appeared to be a new unjustified shooting in Baltimore.
"In my mind, I thought here we go again," said one witness, a young black woman who added that she saw police approach the suspect, a black man, as he was sitting on some steps and that he immediately fled, running up North Avenue before he was shot in the back by an officer. She added that she did not see the suspect holding a gun.
Upon being shot, the suspect fell forward onto his face and a crowd began to rush toward him, said the female witness, but cops ordered them to disperse and when they refused, pepper spray was used.
Another witness, a security guard, said that from his angle he saw the suspect reaching for a gun.
Shortly after these accounts aired, Tobin came back on the broadcast and reported that an unidentified police commander told him that the suspect indeed had a gun but that it went off when it was dropped during his getaway or his attempted arrest.
Other witness accounts back that story, in which the gun went off when the suspect dropped it and then he hurt himself by falling while attempting to flee.
This accords with the one consistent piece of information in all of these accounts: that only one gunshot was heard.
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While preparing for their next live segment, a Fox News crew said they witnessed a Baltimore cop shoot a black man who was running from the officer on Monday afternoon, network reporter Mike Tobin told Shepard Smith on the air.
According to Tobin, the young black man was running from a police officer on North Avenue heading west when the reporter heard one shot fired. A revolver was found at the scene of the incident, but it is not yet known who the gun belonged to, Tobin said.
Tobin said the man "did not appear to be dead," but the cameras caught medics giving him oxygen while on a stretcher. The Fox News reporter said he did not hear the cop say anything before firing the shot, but that he was in a car on the street with the windows up, so it is possible he did not hear a warning.
The street was "moderately busy" at the time of the shooting, Tobin told Smith.
Crowds are already gathering at the street, which is being closed off to preserve the crime scene.
