Natalie Williamson of FOX10 News says the Mobile County Sheriff’s Office is now investigating an officer-involved shooting in Semmes that left a local business owner in the hospital with five bullet wounds, after police say a routine burglary check turned into a gunfight inside his own shop.
Williamson reports that the man shot was Johnny Bowman Jr., identified by police as the owner of Bowman’s Auto Air, and that the first public updates have largely come through Semmes Police Chief Todd Freind, who described what officers say happened in the early morning hours.
Even in the basic outline, this is the kind of incident that makes people’s stomachs drop, because the facts point in two directions at once: officers say they believed they were walking into a potential burglary scene, while a family friend insists Bowman isn’t “the criminal he’s being made out to be.”
What Officers Say Drew Them To The Business
Williamson says Chief Freind told FOX10 that Semmes officers were on routine patrol around 3:00 a.m. when they noticed something that did not look right at Bowman’s Auto Air on Moffett Road.
In Williamson’s reporting, Freind said the shop’s front door was wide open, and in the later update Williamson delivered, investigators described officers also seeing a cut padlock at the open door, which raised concern that a break-in may have happened or was in progress…