Residents were left shocked after a man was shot by police in North Street near Dunmow town centre on Tuesday night (September 1).

Dunmow Broadcast: Crime Scene DunmowCrime Scene Dunmow (Image: Archant)

Officers were called to Knights Way just after 10pm after receiving reports of a man walking down the street with firearms.

A police spokesman said they then shot a man, the first time Essex officers had shot someone in 31 years, and he was taken to hospital where he remained yesterday (Wednesday). Two suspected firearms were found at the scene.

A 48-year-old man, from Dunmow, was arrested on suspicion of firearms offences.

One North Street resident who didn’t wish to be named, told the Broadcast yesterday: “I saw several police officers running down the street after the man and they all had guns.

Dunmow Broadcast: Crime Scene DunmowCrime Scene Dunmow (Image: Archant)

“ I live opposite where he was shot. I heard the noise and looked out of my bedroom window and I couldn’t believe what I was seeing. Someone got shot outside my bedroom window, it was awful.

“I saw him fall to the ground. I couldn’t sleep a wink last night, I was so scared. A woman came running up the road shouting at the police that they shouldn’t have done it. I saw her running up the hill, she had parked her car by the pond.

“I couldn’t hear a lot of what she was saying because the helicopter was going and there was so much noise, it was all so loud.”

She added: “I had just got into bed and I wondered what all the shouting was. Sometimes when guys go to the pub, they shout in the street, but this was really loud. I heard the police say ‘he’s wounded’. I think one of them said ‘he’s left wing wounded’ and the guy was screaming ‘put my head down’. They were trying to get him onto a stretcher for ages afterwards.

“I don’t know what they were doing for so long.” She said she thought the man was probably in his 40s.

Townspeople gathered in the street in small groups yesterday (Wednesday) to express their surprise and shock.

Dunmow was flooded with police cars and buzzing with police officers as a length of North Street, where the man was shot, was sealed off by police tape from Doctor’s Pond to the beginning of Market Hill.

Meanwhile, the Police Complaints Commission began its investigation into why the man was shot in the leg by police in the street on Tuesday night.

People gathered on the pavement to discuss what they had seen and heard, speculating on who the shot man might be.

Lisa Simmons, 47, said: “I saw the helicopter. The sky was lit up.”

Valerie Crouchman from Woodland Park, one of a group of three people in the High Street looking at all the police activity said: “We are shocked.

“We have lived in Dunmow all our lives and there has been nothing like this. We’ve never seen so many police vehicles.”

Margaret Joyce, from Jubilee Court, said: “I haven’t seen so much excitement since the war.”

Jane Rudkin, 50, from The Causeway, said: “We know things go on.

“It’s not the idyllic little town it appears to be. It’s the same as in any town.

“Nothing surprises me.

“I have a teenager and the things I hear from his friends, you won’t expect.

“It’s all hunky dory on the surface but you hear things on the grapevine.”