LODD: Det. Kieran Shields, 32, Orange PD, NJ

[Guest hoss]

May he rest in peace.

August 8, 2006

Jersey Police Officer Is Fatally Shot

By JENNIFER LEE

The New York Times

ORANGE, N.J., Aug. 8 — A city police detective was fatally shot late last night, apparently while chasing a shooting suspect on a residential street.

Shortly afterwards, about 40 police officers surrounded a house on Taylor Street here in the belief that the person who shot the detective, Kieran T. Shields, may have been inside.

Just before 6 a.m., a police SWAT team raided the house, after first sending in robotic scouts and tossing in two stun grenades whose blast and flash shook the neighborhood.

But apparently no suspect was found inside, because the police officers departed about an hour later with no one in their custody. The only signs of the standoff were the two police helicopters that remained whirring high overhead, as they had all night. Police officials declined comment.

The acting director of the Orange police, Aric Webster, said that Detective Shields was shot at about 11:30 p.m. while attempting to arrest a suspect after responding to reports of gunfire, The Associated Press reported. James Rainforth, a retired Orange police officer who was a few blocks away at the time of the shooting, said that Mr. Shields had told colleagues by radio shortly before he was shot that he was in pursuit of a suspect on foot.

Detective Shields was taken to University Medical Center in Newark, where he was pronounced dead about midnight, police officials said.

It was not clear whether the suspect was believed to live in the home that the police surrounded. Neighbors said that it was occupied by a “nice’’ family with a small child.

Families in adjacent homes were evacuated for much of the night. One family, who told the police they had nowhere else to go, waited out the six-hour siege on the sidewalk with their youngest child in a stroller, drinking bottles of apple juice.

Detective Shields 32, was a five-year veteran of the force and the father of three, including an 8-week-old baby.

His father, Columbus Shields, also served on the Orange police, and retired in 2002 after he was injured in the line of duty, according to former colleagues.

Detective Shields had been commended for rescuing a child in a highly publicized 2004 carjacking case. Mr. Shields told The Star-Ledger at the time that when he found the 5-year-old in a stolen S.U.V., “she seemed relieved, and then started to cry.’’

Mr. Shields is the fourth police officer to be shot in Orange since 1999.

Officer Joyce Carnegie was fatally shot on April 8, 1999 during an armed robbery. In January 2001, two officers, Kenneth McGuire and David Lemongello, were shot multiple times in a robbery, but survived.