NEW DETAILS IN FATAL POLICE SHOOTING
Austin police say Morgan Rankins tried to run over cops and confronted an officer with a knife.
What started with two mysterious 911 calls ended in chaos at a South Austin neighborhood Wednesday night after Austin police say a woman tried to run over three officers, led authorities on a car chase and was shot to death by an officer she confronted with a knife, officials said.
Morgan Rankins, 30, was the woman killed, police officials said Thursday. They also identified the officer who shot Rankins as Benjamin Rogers, a four-year veteran of the department who is assigned to patrols in Southeast and West Austin.
Pastor Joseph Parker of David Chapel Missionary Baptist Church in East Austin, who said he knew Rankins her whole life, described her as a friendly, outgoing woman who was easy to get along with and who lived with mental illness.
“Morgan was a wonderful woman,” said Parker, who was Rankins’ pastor and is serving as the family’s spokesman. “She grew up in this church and was active in this church . ... You wouldn’t know she had a mental illness. You’d just encounter a wonderful person.”
Parker said Rankins’ family wasn’t with her when the incident started Wednesday evening. Austin interim Police Chief Brian Manley said no officers were injured.
Police first got involved around 6 p.m. when dispatchers received two 911 hang-ups from the 7900 block of Appomattox Drive in South Austin. Rankins’ grand- parents live in the house, which is listed as Rankins’ address in public records and where Parker said she spent time with her family.
Police became concerned when, during one of the 911 calls, the dispatcher overheard someone far away from the phone receiver talking about “trying to blow up the house,” Manley said. Officers were dispatched
and, when they arrived, a woman in a Dodge Charger later identified as Rankins pulled out of the driveway and tried to run them over, Manley said.
The officers “did have to jump into the lawn to avoid being struck by this vehicle,” Manley said.
A car chase through the neighborhood ensued. At one point, Rankins reached Manchaca Road and tried to run over Rogers, who was setting up spikes on the road to stop the Charger, Manley said.
But the Charger crashed into a telephone pole and came to a stop in a nearby yard on Manchaca, about a half-mile south of William Cannon Drive, he said. Rogers approached Rankins and told her to put her hands up; when she exited the vehicle
and turned around, Rogers saw she was holding a knife in her right hand above her shoulder, Manley said.
Rogers told her multi- ple times to drop the knife, “and ultimately he fires his weapon once he knows she is so close that his life was in danger,” Manley said.
Rogers radioed that shots had been fired and began to try to save her life, but Rankins died at the scene. Police are investigating how many times he shot her, Manley said.
The officer’s dashboard camera didn’t capture the shooting because his vehi-
cle was facing in the other direction, Manley said. It did capture the previous moment when Rankins drove toward him.
Two seconds before the officer reported the shoot- ing, someone called 911 and told police that the woman was trying to commit “sui- cide by cop,” Manley said. Police haven’t yet reported who made that call. Parker said he didn’t know either.
Police didn’t find any explosives, or anything that would involve blowing something up, at the house where the initial call came from, Manley said.
“It is with a heavy heart that I do give the deepest condolences to her family,” Manley said.
Rogers will be placed on administrative leave while the department’s Internal Affairs office and the Travis County district attorney’s office investigate the shooting, Manley said. Those steps are standard protocol for Austin police in officer-in- volved shootings.
Rankins’ family isn’t sure why she acted the way police say she did, Parker said. He said he was unsure what mental illness Rankins had been diagnosed with, but she took medication for it.
“The family said (Wednesday morning) was a good day — a great day,” Parker said. “There was nothing that hap- pened that gave them any indication that this would take place.”
It’s clear from Rankins’ social media that one of the things she loved most in the world was music. She often talked about musicians, and she posted audio of some of her own songs online.
“I sit and stare like a vegeta- ble in a body full of thoughts I can’t get across,” she raps in a song called “Rough.” “But strong body, strong heart, like a wooden cross. Noah’s ark is inside of me. I can weather through storms, in spite of me.”
The family is still in shock and grieving for a woman “whose way of dying was so inconsistent with the way she lived,” Parker said.
“No one thought her life would end in this fashion,” he said.