VPD: Shooting started as fistfight between warehouse workers
VANCOUVER, Wash. (KOIN) -- A 21-year-old man was shot in the leg after a fistfight between coworkers escalated into gunfire outside a distribution warehouse in Vancouver, police said.
According to the Vancouver Police Department, officers responded to reports of a shooting around 7:50 a.m. Friday at the On Trac warehouse on Northwest 32nd Avenue.
Police said they arrived at the warehouse and found a man wounded by gunfire inside the building. In a press release sent Friday morning, VPD initially identified the wounded man as the victim and said they detained another man as a suspect at the scene.
In an updated release sent later Friday afternoon, VPD said the men, who have still not been named, got into a fistfight and several other employees intervened to separate them. The men went back to their cars, police said, and one of the men drove past the other's vehicle, stopping for a moment with his driver's side window down.
According to the updated VPD release, the other man then got out of his car, fell, dropped a knife, picked the knife back up and started sprinting at the man's car with the window down. VPD said the man sitting in his car then shot the knife-wielding man in the leg.
VPD later reclassified which of the men they considered the victim and suspect, claiming the man who fired his gun acted in self-defense. Police said he was released from custody after cooperating with officers at the scene and no charges have been filed.
The wounded man was taken to a local hospital in critical condition.
This is a developing story.