From the Las Vegas Review-Journal: 

An exchange of gunfire in the central valley left a civilian dead and a Las Vegas police officer injured Tuesday afternoon.

The incident came amid a sharp increase in officer-involved shootings for the Metropolitan Police Department in 2017 that has included four over the past four weeks.

Las Vegas Review-Journal records show that there have been 15 officer-involved shootings so far this year. There were 10 in 2016.

“It’s happening all across the valley, and now individuals are taking it upon themselves to fire at police officers,” Clark County Sheriff Joseph Lombardo said Tuesday, outside of University Medical Center, where the injured Metro officer, who has not been identified, was in stable condition.

“I’m happy to say he’s doing OK, as good as to be expected,” Lombardo said of the officer. “He’s in good spirits, but, obviously, he’s going through the trauma.”

Tuesday’s shooting stemmed from a Sunday incident in which a man had several cellphones stolen from his vehicle while he was in a grocery store, Metro Capt. Kelly McMahill told reporters Tuesday night.

“That very savvy victim went home, and, at some point today, he was able to track his cellphone to the area of where the officer-involved shooting occurred,” she said.

The tracking feature pinned the stolen cellphone to a pickup truck on the 4100 block of West Tompkins Avenue. That’s where two officers responded to reports of a suspicious vehicle at about 4:15 p.m. Tuesday.

The officers talked to the driver, who was alone in the truck, for several minutes, McMahill said. They asked him multiple times to get out of the truck after he started the vehicle. He refused to leave and, without warning, pulled out a semi-automatic handgun and began firing at the officers.