One person is dead and a large stretch of southbound Interstate 35, including the highway’s upper deck, will be closed for several hours Thursday morning after Texas Department of Public Safety troopers opened fire\u00a0on an ambulance that had been reported stolen out of Fort Worth, authorities said.<\/p>\n
The driver of the ambulance was shot by a DPS trooper and pronounced dead at the scene, DPS Sgt. Jason Galaviz\u00a0said during a Thursday morning news conference. The driver’s identity has not been released.<\/p>\n
Troopers first located the stolen Fort Worth Fire Department ambulance traveling southbound on I-35 in Williamson County around 6:30 a.m. and attempted to stop it, Galaviz said. The driver refused to stop and continued south toward Austin.<\/p>\n
Around U.S. 290, the driver began intentionally ramming multiple civilian vehicles, according to DPS. Troopers attempted to use a PIT maneuver to stop the ambulance but were unsuccessful as it continued onto the upper deck of I-35.<\/p>\n
A DPS trooper then fired their duty weapon, striking the driver, \u00a0Galaviz\u00a0said. DPS said the driver was the only person injured or killed during the incident. The agency did not say how many shots the trooper fired or how many civilian vehicles were struck, saying those details remain under investigation.<\/p>\n
The incident has prompted the closure of southbound I-35 from U.S. 183 into the downtown Austin area, according to the Austin Police Department. DPS said the southbound upper deck will remain closed until investigators finish processing the scene.<\/p>\n
The Texas Rangers are investigating the shooting. DPS said the information released Thursday morning was preliminary and could change as the investigation continues.<\/p>\n
Drivers were asked to avoid the area and use alternate routes if possible.<\/p>\n
Staff writer Julianna Duennes Russ\u00a0contributed to this report.\u00a0<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"One person is dead and a large stretch of southbound Interstate 35, including the highway’s upper deck, will…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":408319,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[10],"tags":[116,118,117],"class_list":["post-408318","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-fort-worth","tag-fort-worth","tag-fort-worth-headlines","tag-fort-worth-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/408318","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=408318"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/408318\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/408319"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=408318"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=408318"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=408318"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}