Amarjit Singh

The man whose suicide was broadcast live across the country on Fox News this afternoon had stolen a car in Phoenix and shot at police officers this morning, according to Phoenix police. Phoenix police Sergeant Tommy Thompson tells New Times that police have not figured out who this man is yet, but police were after him for quite some time. See also: -Fox News Just Showed a Man Shoot Himself in the Head Outside of Phoenix on Live TV Someone called police this morning, reporting that a man walking near 72nd Avenue and McDowell Road this morning had hit a car, although it's not clear exactly what he did to that car. While officers were responding to that, the man somehow managed to rob people of their car -- not the same vehicle he damaged. Police spotted him shortly after he stole the car, and after chasing the man for a while, police dropped back into "surveillance," Thompson says. Undercover vehicles and helicopters were following him at this point. Near 44th Avenue and Roosevelt, two officers -- one inside an undercover vehicle, the other standing outside a second undercover vehicle -- were parked off to the side of the road. Thompson says the man drove to the other side of the road and shot at the officers before driving his car onto Interstate 10. At least one car was hit with a bullet, but the officers themselves were not hit. By the time the man drove out to around 500th Avenue, he exited the interstate, drove south, and started heading back east. In those five seconds, producers should have been able to turn the feed off and prevent it from reaching viewers. Unfortunately, that delay failed just as a man involved in a high-speed police chase in Arizona shot himself in the head after exiting his vehicle. At the time the unidentified man shot himself, the camera was trained squarely on him and nothing was censored.

We took every precaution to avoid any such live incident by putting the helicopter pictures on a five second delay. Unfortunately, this mistake was the result of a severe human error and we apologize for what viewers ultimately saw on the screen.