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OLYMPIA, Wash. - Surveillance video released Friday shows two beer theft suspects loitering around a local Safeway store before one of them tosses a case of beer at a store employee, sparking a police response that ended with both suspects being shot.



Olympia Police spokeswoman Laura Wohl said in an email that officials have confirmed "that the individuals in the Safeway surveillance are the two suspects who were shot."



The video, recorded by three different cameras posted at different positions at the store, first shows the two stepbrothers outside the front entrance of the grocery with their skateboards at about 12:45 a.m. Thursday. One of them appears to take a watermelon from a display and then they disappear from view for a few moments.



The two, later identified as Andre Thompson, 24, and Bryson Chaplin, 21, of Olympia, then return. One of them, believed to be Thompson, is seen staggering and swinging his skateboard around before falling down. He gets up and they then enter the store after hanging around the entrance for a short time.



About three minutes later, one of the suspects is seen walking rapidly through the store with a case of Corona beer. An employee then comes around the corner and says something to him.



The suspect then tosses the beer toward the employee. The case strikes her on the hand then falls to the floor, and a puddle of beer foam oozes out from one or more broken bottles.



The suspect is then seen running out the front entrance of the store. A moment afterward, the store employee is seen walking out the front entrance and making a call on her cell phone.



The released video ends at that point and does not show officers responding to the store.







Olympia Police Chief Ronnie Roberts says no video exists of the officers searching for the suspects. But he said one of those officers, Ryan Donald, encountered two men with skateboards who fit witnesses' descriptions, and moments later, he radioed in that shots had been fired.



In radio calls released by police, Donald calls dispatchers once he spots the men and again to report that he fired shots.



"I believe one of them is hit, both of them are running," Donald said.



He tells dispatchers that one suspect "assaulted me with his skateboard. ... I tried to grab his friend. They're very aggressive, just so you know."



He says he has one man, then both, at gunpoint and asks for help.



Seconds later, he shouts, "Shots fired! One down," and asks for more backup units. He then says the second suspect has been shot.



The police chief said that Donald wasn't injured but that an officer "has the right to defend himself" if a suspect wields an object that could be used as a deadly weapon.



Donald, 35, who is on administrative leave pending the investigation, has been with the department for just over three years.



The suspects are black, and Donald is white, but Roberts said, "There's no indication to me that race was a factor in this case at all."

