Robbery Suspect Shot by Police Was Not Armed

By Joseph Domelowicz Jr.

The 41-year old robbery suspect who was shot and killed last Thursday by a Lynn police officer, following a brief encounter on the Lynnway, was not armed as was first thought.

According to Carrie Kimball Monahan a spokesperson for the Essex County District Attorney’s office, Michael McInnins, the man suspected of armed robbery at a Lynnway gas station in the early morning hours of Thursday, November 29, had a lengthy criminal record and did not comply with police orders to take his hands from his pockets. However, no weapon was found on McInnis after he was shot and the shooting itself remains under investigation.

“Mr. McInnis was not armed,” said Monahan. “The officers were responding to a report of an armed robbery, in which the victim indicated that the suspect had threatened to kill him several times.”

However, McInnis never showed his hands during the alleged robbery and when confronted by police moments after fleeing the scene, allegedly with $150 in cash, he again refused to show his hands to police.

The robbery took place just before 4 a.m. on Thursday, November 29 at the Lynnway Gulf gas station at the corner of the Lynnway and Commercial Street. The ensuing encounter with police and the shooting that followed, forced police to close the Lynnway from about 4 a.m. until about 9:30 a.m., snarling traffic throughout the city for hours.

Following the shooting, McInnis was rushed to Massachusetts General Hospital in Boston for emergency surgery. However, he was pronounced dead a short time after surgery.

Lynn Police Chief and Essex County Sheriff-elect Kevin Coppinger pointed out that his officers were operating on the report of an armed robbery and had to assume the suspect was armed, but did not comment on the new information that McInnis was, in fact, not armed, because of the on-going investigation.

“The information received from the caller was that an armed robbery had taken place, that the subject was armed and that he had threatened to shoot the store clerk, that is the information they (the responding officers) were relying on,” said Coppinger.

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