Medford Police shoot suspect on Winthrop St.
Published on October 25th, 2000
STONEHAM, MA - Medford Police shot an unarmed man in the back last Thursday after a high-speed chase through Stoneham side streets.
"One police car almost tipped over it cornered so fast," said a Stoneham resident who witnessed the chase.
Scott Ranney, 31, is the second suspect that Medford Police have shot this year. The first was a thief with a knife at the Meadow Glen Mall in March. The convicted thief's mother called Ranney's family last week to offer her sympathy. Her child survived.
Ranney also survived but is in critical condition at Mass General Hospital.
Ranney is a known drug offender and was driving a car reported stolen from Revere on Oct. 7. Police had received a tip that Ranney was dealing drugs.
Ranney ignored attempts by Medford Police to direct him off Route 93 to where roadblocks had been set up. Ranney continued into Stoneham, exiting Route 93 and winding through the southwest corner of town until he turned off Congress Street onto Winthrop Street and crashed into a telephone poll.
They said...
According to police, two marked Medford Police cruisers arrived on the scene, and the officers ordered Ranney to stay in his car.
Ranney "emerged from the vehicle and charged toward the officers, striking at least one of them," according to the police report.
The report states that an officer shot Ranney once during the ensuing struggle on Winthrop Street. The officer's name has not been released. Medford Police, State Police and the District Attorney's Office are investigating and Ranney's family has hired a lawyer.
Some media sources have reported that police claim Ranney had a dark object in his hand, possibly a cell phone.
She said...
Ranney's sister Stacey Briffet of 18 Congress Street rushed to her window Thursday after hearing screeching tires and sirens. Her home is on the corner of Winthrop and Congress Streets.
"I saw the whole thing," she said. "My brother was running away from the police... There were no warnings... He had nothing in his hands."
Briffet said she looked out the window and saw that a car had crashed. She could see that the airbag had discharged. Then she saw a man get out of the car. He was her brother. She describes him as wobbly and hesitant.
According to Briffet, Ranney ran across Winthrop Street, toward her side yard "like he was going to try and jump my fence," Briffet said. This diagonal would mean Ranney was running toward police on the vertical access and away from them on the horizontal access, possibly explaining some of the confusion in stories.
But Briffet said her brother made no contact with the officers. And she said that the Mass General surgeon who operated on her brother told the family that Ranney "was shot in the back."
"My window was open, and I didn't hear any warnings," Briffet said, "just one shot."
Ranney has lost a kidney and a section of his bowel. Bullet fragments have damaged his liver. And arteries in his stomach were ruptured. He is still in critical condition in the intensive care unit at Mass General.
Quick response was crucial
Responding to an 11:20 a.m. call on Oct. 19, Action Ambulance Operations Manager Peter Viele arrived at the scene with Stoneham's emergency medical technician (EMT) unit and a paramedic unit from Melrose.
Ranney was lying in the Street bleeding as police cordoned off the area.
"He was alive when we got him to the hospital (at 11:52 a.m.)," Viele said.
Paramedics Warren Mayhew and Oleg Feldman and EMTs Jada Bousquet and Robert Gulinello saved Ranney's life.
The helicopter that folks saw hovering over the southwest corner of Stoneham last Thursday was from the TV news.
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