A cop in Indiana mistook a film actor for real robber during a robbery scene and fired shot at him.
Indiana State Police were called to the Back Step Brewing Company in Crawfordsville on Tuesday evening for a possible robbery in progress call after someone called 911 to report seeing a masked man with a gun enter the back of the building, the US media reported.
When officers arrived from the Crawfordsville Police Department, they saw a masked man coming out of the door at the eatery with what appeared to be a gun and ordered him to drop it.
Officers fired at the man, later identified as Jeff Duff, striking the building nearby and not hitting him.
Duff then dropped the gun and took off his mask before telling officers that he was filming for a movie.
‘The bullet went by his head. It was very close,’ Phillip Demoret, an actor, told RTV6.
‘I don’t want to think about it. If it had hit him, we’d be having a whole different conversation. Thank goodness he wasn’t.’
Kodi Swank, co-owner of Montgomery County Production, released a statement: ‘There’s lesson to be learned on both sides of the spectrum from us as a low budget movie company and from the police department on their quick reaction.
The Crawfordsville Police Department said: ‘The subject did not immediately comply with the officer’s commands and raised the gun pointing it at the officer” during the September incident. ‘Officers later determined that the firearm was a movie prop and that the subject was part of a movie being filmed at the time of the incident. ‘Those filming the movie had not notified authorities they would be shooting in area business and on public thoroughfares.’
