PALM BEACH COUNTY, Fla. — A man was taken to a hospital overnight following a deputy-involved shooting west of Delray Beach, the Palm Beach County Sheriff's Office said.
The agency said deputies responded to a welfare check in the 5600 block of Via Delray just after 11:30 p.m. Wednesday and found a man, identified as Steven Magill, 18, threatening to take his own life.
"There were some pictures of him with a gun where he was going to try to kill himself," Palm Beach County Sheriff Ric Bradshaw said. "He put it out to some friends, so they called for a welfare check. The deputies get there, and he's pacing up and down the canal bank. At one point he put the gun up to his head."
Palm Beach County deputies tried talking to Magill in hopes of offering him mental health services.
The sheriff's office said Magill walked into the canal, and then suddenly pointed his gun at the deputies.
"While he is walking back and forth in the water, they're trying to de-escalate it," Bradshaw said. "Tell him to come on out, we want to get you some help, surrender and we'll get you where you need to be. At one point in time, he took the gun out of his pocket ... and pointed it right at the deputies, and they did what they had to do."
The deputies fired at Magill, hitting him in the upper torso. He was taken to a local hospital, where he's currently in stable condition and expected to survive.
"They used their training," Bradshaw said. "They did exactly what they should do, and they reacted to a dangerous situation where somebody points a gun at you."
Bradshaw said the agency's new body cameras will also be crucial to the incident.
"This is the first time we've used them in a critical incident situation," Bradshaw said.
The sheriff said he believes the body camera footage will show the entirety of the situation.
"The nice part about this is when we said somebody pointed a gun at us, and we had to shoot him, there are a lot of naysayers that say, 'Oh, the police say that all the time,'" Bradshaw said. "Guess what? There is a picture. He is pointing the gun, so they are not making it up. That was good that the body captured it, their attempts to help him, their attempts to de-escalate and what they did afterwards."
Once released, Magill will be booked into the Palm Beach County Jail on a charge of aggravated assault on a law enforcement officer, the sheriff's office said.
The Palm Beach County Sheriff's Office, the Florida Department of Law Enforcement and the state attorney's office are all investigating the deputy-involved shooting.
The deputies involved have been placed on administrative leave, which is standard department protocol when a deputy discharges his or her weapon.
WPTV has requested the body camera footage and is awaiting its release pending an FDLE investigation.
