South Bend, Ind. Mayor Pete Buttigieg will be off the 2020 campaign trail at least through Wednesday after a police-involved shooting in his hometown over the weekend.
Early Sunday morning, South Bend police responded to a call that a suspicious person was going through cars at an apartment complex, The Associated Press reported. The suspect, Eric Jack Logan, 53, reportedly approached an officer with a knife, and the officer shot him. The incident is under investigation by the St. Joseph prosecutor’s office.
{mosads}Following the shooting, Buttigieg’s presidential campaign canceled a two-day trip to California that was set for Tuesday and Wednesday and was expected to include fundraisers and a policy rollout.
The mayor was also supposed to attend an LGBTQ gala put on by the Democratic National Committee in New York on Monday, but Buttigieg’s husband, Chasten, will attend the event in his place.
During a Sunday night press conference, Buttigieg said it was important to him to communicate with his community after failing to do so earlier in his mayoral tenure.
“One of the reasons we’re communicating upfront right now is because of lessons learned from members of the community,” he said, according to CNN. “We’ve had prior cases of use of force incidents and officer-involved shootings where I hesitated, frankly, to get in front of cameras because we didn’t know very much, and it was out of our hands.”
“The relationship between the police officers who are sworn to keep this community safe and everybody who lives here is among the most important things we have as a city,” Buttigieg said.