Raleigh police identify officer who shot man holding a gun

The Raleigh police officer who shot a man off New Bern Avenue Tuesday evening has been with the department for seven-and-a-half years, the Police Department said Thursday.

J.E. Byrd, who is assigned to field operations, has been placed on administrative leave as the State Bureau of Investigation reviews the incident, which is standard procedure after a shooting by an officer. Byrd joined the Raleigh police force in August 2012, the department said.

Police responded about 6:45 p.m. Tuesday after a 911 caller said a man was “flashing” a gun within a group of men at a shopping center on North Rogers Lane, off of New Bern Avenue.

When police arrived, they saw a man later identified as Javier Torres, 26, who matched a description the caller had given. Torres was holding a pizza box with a gun in his waistband, police body camera video showed.

Torres saw the police and ran. Officers pursued him, ordering him to stop and drop the gun several times.

Torres cut through Rogers Farm Drive toward Duckling Way, the video showed. He cut through bushes toward a narrow path.

Byrd came around from Duckling Way and saw Torres running toward him with the gun in his hand and fired once, the video showed. The bullet hit Torres in the abdomen.

Byrd found the weapon Torres was running with and watched over it as two other officers applied pressure to the wound, the video showed.

Byrd is heard shouting at bystanders in their cars to clear away so that Emergency Medical Services can get through.

Torres is at WakeMed, recovering from his injuries, police have said.

Police say he will be charged with altering/removing a gun’s serial number, going armed to the terror of the public and resisting, delaying and obstructing.

‘Trump, presidents, different races ... women’

Luke Asefa works at a tobacco shop where he said he sees Torres at least three times a week. Torres never seemed like the kind of person who would point a gun at the police, he said.

“He comes in here, we chop it up about life and stuff,” Asefa said. “Trump, presidents, different races, stuff like that, women.”

The tobacco shop is one of several businesses in the Edgewater Place shopping center, close to where the incident took place.

911 calls

The 911 call made Tuesday was one of more than 800 such calls from the shopping center since Jan. 1, 2017, according to calls for service history reports that The News & Observer requested from the Raleigh Police Department.

About 950 calls were made in the same time period from the Sheetz gas station and grill next door, according to the Police Department.

At the shopping center, 911 was called 39 times for larceny, once for shots fired and twice for armed robbery.

This is the same shopping center where Soheil Antonio Mojarrad was fatally shot by a Raleigh officer in April 2019 after police said he advanced toward the officer while holding a knife, reported ABC11, The N&O’s media partner.

Most of the calls at Sheetz were for security checks, but one call in January reported shots fired into a building or vehicle. There were 77 calls involving larceny and four calls reporting armed robbery since 2017.

Monzer Ayesh, who owns a pizza shop in the shopping center, said he never felt scared there before Tuesday night. He said he has been there for three years and never had any problems before.

“I’ve never felt unsafe or (in)secure in the area; it has always been fine,” Ayesh said. “These isolated incidents might happen.”

This story was originally published March 13, 2020 at 6:15 AM.