St. Louis area authorities shoot, wound two

CLAYTON, Mo. -- An FBI agent shot and wounded a suspected parole violator who allegedly drove threateningly toward him Monday, marking the first shots fired by anyone with a 12-year-old area task force designed to capture apparently violent fugitives.

Since founded in 1991, the St. Louis Metropolitan Fugitive Task Force -- including St. Louis city and county police, as well as the FBI -- by conservative estimates has rounded up more than 2,000 people "without a shooting incident," St. Louis County Police Lt. Jon Belmar said.

"That's a pretty good record," Belmar said after the unidentified FBI agent wounded Darius Saulsberry, 21, in Pagedale, a St. Louis suburb.

Nearly four hours later in an unrelated matter, St. Louis County police sent to a home in Winchester, another suburb, shot and wounded a supposedly suicidal man who was wielding a roughly 3-foot-long sword that nicked one officer's hand, Belmar said.

That man was shot at least twice, hospitalizing him with injuries "that would appear to be life-threatening," Belmar said. He declined to identify the 23-year-old man.

Belmar described the two shootings as follows:

About 7:30 a.m., task force members failed to find Saulsberry -- a convicted drug trafficker sought for unspecified parole violations -- at his Pagedale residence. When spotted moments later in a nearby parked car, Saulsberry ignored orders by law enforcers to step from the vehicle.

Drove into officer's car

He then drove broadside into an officer's car before backing up and driving across a lawn toward an FBI agent, "who felt he was in immediate danger" with no escape route from the approaching car.

The agent fired twice, striking Saulsberry once in the elbow before the fugitive drove through a field. His vehicle was spotted again by another task force member, who secretly gave chase.

Saulsberry was arrested a short time later tossing some of his clothes into a Dumpster.

In the other shooting, police responding to a relative's report of a man threatening suicide found him wielding a sword and talking of hanging himself.

Talks between police and the man failed, and the man continued swinging the sword, striking portable shields carried by law enforcers.

An officer shot the man four times with non-lethal "beanbags" fired from a 12-gauge shotgun, hoping to subdue the man. But when the man continued approaching, nicking one officer's hand with the sword, two other officers shot at him with bullets, hitting him at least twice.