Suspect shot, killed by officers outside Florida mosque

Police officers from multiple law enforcement agencies reportedly shot an armed man outside of a Florida mosque on Friday.

Authorities said that the man was wanted in an attempted murder investigation, according to multiple local reports.

The man exited his car while holding a weapon at the Masjid Al-Iman mosque near Fort Lauderdale, Fla., the South Florida Sun Sentinel reported.{mosads}

Officers from the Fort Lauderdale and Plantation police departments, as well as the U.S. Marshals Service, fired on him, Gadyaces Serralta, U.S. marshal for the Southern District of Florida, told the Sun Sentinel.

“He exited the vehicle, brandishing a firearm,” Serralta said, according to the newspaper. “The task force members opened fire and the subject unfortunately is deceased.”

Serralta declined to tell the newspaper how many times the man was shot or which law enforcement agency’s bullets fatally struck him.

“We do not believe that the mosque was involved in any way, nor the subject with the mosque, but those are things we need to look into and it’s going to take some time, folks,” he said during a news conference. 

A spokesman for the Florida chapter of the Council on American Islamic Relations told the newspaper that the man who was killed was “not somebody known to the mosque congregants who I have spoken to.”

The suspect’s identity has not yet been revealed.