Texas police officer shoots son after mistaking him for intruder

Police urge citizens to call 911 instead of taking law into their own hands

A veteran Texas police officer shot his son after mistaking him for an intruder in his home, authorities have said.

The shooting took place on Saturday evening in a Dallas suburb, when an off-duty police officer returned to his house and discovered that someone appeared to have been inside, DeSoto police department spokesperson Pete Schulte told reporters.

The son, who Mr Schulte said is in his 20s, was taken to hospital with a non life-threatening wound to his arm.

“It was a mistake,” Mr Schulte said. “It was a startling situation. It was an accident.”

The officer has not been named, nor has his son.

Mr Schulte said that the officer returned to his home to discover the garage door open, and that doors that he had left unlocked had been locked.

“It caused him to have some concern that there’s something in the house,” Mr Schulte said. “Then things happened very quickly.”

Mr Schulte said the officer was a “long-term veteran of the Dallas police department” and that bosses did not fault the man for not calling for help from his colleagues. The off-duty officer told them he had wanted to look into the situation himself before he “wasted a call to 911”, the spokesman added.

But Mr Schulte urged citizens to call the emergency number “if you come home and something doesn’t feel right”. “It doesn’t bother us at all,” he said.

The incident comes shortly after the police shooting of Atatiana Jefferson, who was killed earlier this month while playing video games with her nephew in her Fort Worth home.

And in Dallas earlier this month, former officer Amber Guyger was jailed for 10 years after shooting her neighbour Botham Jean, mistakenly believing he was an intruder in her home.