Sandy MaloneSan Antonio, TX – A San Antonio police sergeant fatally shot a woman who pulled a replica Uzi submachine gun on him in a shopping center parking lot on Wednesday.
The incident occurred at about 5:15 p.m. in the parking lot of the Huebner Commons Shopping Center near Huebner Road and Vance Jackson on the northwest side of the city, the San Antonio Express reported.
Officers responded to the shopping center after receiving calls about an “agitated woman” who was “very distraught” outside the shopping center, according to the police report.
“People who saw her noticed she had a gun tucked into the back of her sweatpants,” San Antonio Police Chief William McManus said at a press conference. “[She] had her hands up, fists clenched.”
San Antonio Police Sergeant David Perry, a 23-year veteran of the police force, ordered the woman to put her hands up, the San Antonio Express reported.
Chief McManus said that 26-year-old Hannah Westall “ignored” Sgt. Perry’s commands and “reached behind her back and pulled out a gun from her waistband.”
Westall raised the gun toward Sgt. Perry as if to shoot him, and the law enforcement officer opened fire, the San Antonio Express reported.
“It got to the point where the sergeant felt compelled to use deadly force,” Chief McManus said, according to KIII. “He shot multiple times, striking her in the upper torso and the lower torso.”
Sgt. Perry was not injured in the altercation, police said. Westall died at the scene.
Police said detectives investigating the incident had determined that the Uzi in Westall’s possession was a “non-functional replica of a handheld machine gun,” the San Antonio Express reported.
The replica was “visually indistinguishable from a fully functional gun,” police said.
Authorities said the shooting remains under investigation, WOAI reported.