Surveillance footage released in the wake of a weekend shooting in Tucson appears to show a man opening fire on a public street and then being struck by gunfire from a police officer after he had wounded multiple people. Authorities identified the suspect as 21-year-old David Leroy French and say nine people were injured in the incident. The episode took place in the early morning hours of July 16, when law enforcement officers who were nearby engaged the gunman and stopped the attack.
Loading post…
Video of the encounter, which circulated after the shooting, allegedly shows French firing multiple rounds before running down the street toward officers stationed in the area. One officer fired a single round that struck French and ended the confrontation, according to law enforcement accounts. French and nine victims were taken to a local hospital, and officials described their conditions as critical at the time they were transported for medical care.
Investigators have characterized the shooting as emerging from an argument between two groups, though they have not released additional motive details. Police arrested French at the scene and booked him on multiple counts tied to the violence. Court documents and law-enforcement statements show he faces nine counts of aggravated assault with a firearm, nine counts of aggravated assault, and a count of discharging a firearm at a structure. Authorities continue to investigate the circumstances that led up to the confrontation.
The recent violence has drawn renewed attention because French was already under court supervision following a 2024 case in which he admitted to a separate assault involving a firearm. That earlier episode began, prosecutors said at the time, when a car-wash employee asked French and his companions to leave the property because they were being loud. Confrontation escalated, and surveillance from that incident captured French brandishing a rifle and firing in the worker’s general direction while others in his group interfered with the employee.
In the 2024 case, prosecutors ultimately reduced the allegations against French. He pleaded guilty to a single count of aggravated assault with a deadly weapon or dangerous instrument, classified as a class three felony. As part of that resolution, prosecutors dismissed a separate dangerous-offense allegation, and French was spared a prison term. Instead, he was sentenced to four years of probation and ordered to complete 100 hours of community service. At the time of the earlier incident, French told authorities he had been drinking.
The decision to drop the dangerous-offense allegation in 2024 has become a focal point for scrutiny after the latest shooting. Former chief criminal deputy county attorney David Berkman, who reviewed the matter publicly, said prosecutors’ choice to dismiss that portion of the charge had a direct bearing on whether French would have been in custody at the time of the July attack. "It's odd because it's not what a prosecutor is supposed to do," Berkman said, adding that, were the dangerous-offense count still in place, the mandatory sentence would likely have kept French behind bars. "A good prosecutor says, 'I think he should go to prison.'"
Police escort a handcuffed man in a white suit following the Tucson shooting; authorities took a suspect into custody as investigators probed the incident that injured nine.
The latest shooting and the circumstances of the earlier plea agreement have prompted questions from observers about prosecutorial decisions and the sentencing outcomes for violent offenses. Court records from the 2024 case show the agreement that avoided a prison term centered on the dismissal of the dangerous-offense allegation, a move that former prosecutors say has significant consequences for mandatory sentencing. Officials handling the recent investigation have not publicly tied the earlier resolution to the new charges beyond noting French’s probationary status.
At the time of the July 16 shooting, French was taken into custody at the scene and later booked on the array of counts connected to the attack. Police said they transported him, along with the nine injured people, to a hospital where all were treated for critical injuries. Investigators continue to piece together the timeline and circumstances leading to the exchange of gunfire, and the case remains under active review by law-enforcement agencies and the county attorney’s office as the criminal process proceeds.
Court audio from French's prior sentencing shows Pima County Superior Court Judge J. Alan Goodwin was "on the fence" yet granted probation, as reported by the Arizona Daily Star. A petition to revoke his probation was filed immediately after the July 19 shooting, with his next court date set for Aug. 3; he was ordered held without bond following an initial appearance from his hospital bed.
The downtown shooting occurred in the early morning hours of Sunday, July 19, 2026, on the 100 block of East Congress Street at North Sixth Avenue in downtown Tucson, not July 16 as another line in the article suggests.
Security camera footage obtained by the Arizona Daily Star shows the gunman firing down East Congress Street outside Empire Pizza & Pub; police and news reports say two of the people struck were on the restaurant’s patio.
In the days after the attack, Empire Pizza posted on social media that it was pausing an expansion plan, and downtown business groups said they are exploring new safety measures — including shared ID-scanning and ejection-tracking technology — to try to reduce late-night violence in the area.