Officer Jeffrey Wittstruck was shot in the face and on the top of his head during a theft encounter at a JC Penney store in Omaha, Nebraska. The shooting was on March 12, 2021 at the Westroads Mall. 21-year-old Kenya Jenkins allegedly fired 4 shots at Officer Wittstruck during a confrontation.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
The situation unfolded when JC Penney employees called police to report a shoplifting attempt. Kenya allegedly was caught stealing a package of t-shirts, he tried to run but was detained by mall security.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Omaha police say Kenya was not cooperative and initially gave a false name. Officer Wittstruck tried to arrest Kenya but he pulled away, the officer then shot a taser at Kenya but the prongs missed. Another physical struggle ensued, and that is when authorities say Kenya pulled a gun out of his sweatshirt pocket and fired four times at Officer Wittstruck. The officer was shot in the face and on the top of his head.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Kenya ran out of the mall and drove off in a white BMW. A high speed chase soon followed. Kenya ended up crashing on a railroad after his BMW stalled on the center of the train tracks. The suspect was arrested and charged with suspicion of attempted first-degree murder and use of a gun to commit a felony.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Officer Wittstruck was rushed to the hospital and is in stable condition, although he will require surgery.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
There have been several shootings at Charlotte area malls over the years. Avenanna Propst, 13, was shot and killed at Concord Mills Mall in Concord, NC on December 28, 2019.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
A man was shot at Concord Mills while watching a movie in the AMC theaters within the mall.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
A man was shot and killed at the Carolina Place mall during a fist fight with a DTLR store employee.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Officer Wittstruck got struck in the face by gunfire by a shoplifting suspect at a JC Penney store inside a mall <\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":16581,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-10786","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/tender-hodgkin.62-151-180-206.plesk.page\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10786","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/tender-hodgkin.62-151-180-206.plesk.page\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/tender-hodgkin.62-151-180-206.plesk.page\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/tender-hodgkin.62-151-180-206.plesk.page\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/tender-hodgkin.62-151-180-206.plesk.page\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=10786"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/tender-hodgkin.62-151-180-206.plesk.page\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10786\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":16582,"href":"https:\/\/tender-hodgkin.62-151-180-206.plesk.page\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10786\/revisions\/16582"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/tender-hodgkin.62-151-180-206.plesk.page\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/16581"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/tender-hodgkin.62-151-180-206.plesk.page\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=10786"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/tender-hodgkin.62-151-180-206.plesk.page\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=10786"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/tender-hodgkin.62-151-180-206.plesk.page\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=10786"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}