Intense video shows the split-second decision police are forced to make.
The video shows an officer walking up to a mobile home after a man says he was beaten and robbed and he believed that the suspect was hiding out there.
The officer knocked and told the suspect to come out and talk to him. The suspect pulled a gun and pointed it at the officer.
The officer quickly opened fire.
"A Lufkin police officer was involved in a fatal shooting early this morning following a call of a man attacking another man with a rifle on North Chestnut St.
According to Lufkin Police Department, the preliminary investigation shows just after midnight officers arrived in the 900 block of North Chestnut St. to find a man standing in front of two mobile homes, bleeding from his head.
The victim and a woman who was with him said they were robbed of their car keys, wallet, and cell phone by an armed white man, identified as Anthony Cravo, 52, of Cypress. The victim said Cravo hit him in the head with the butt of long gun. He said the suspect then ran away down North Chestnut St.
The victim directed officers to a mobile home on the backside of the property where witnesses or the Cravo may be located.
The LPD says officers approached the mobile home and found the front door open, but draped with a sheet. An officer knocked on the open door and says Cravo, who was inside the mobile home said, “Come in, come in.” The officer said, “Come out and talk to me please.” The LPD says that's when Cravo came out with a rifle still in his hands.
"Upon seeing the uniformed officer, the suspect raised the gun as if to shoot the officer," the LPD said in a statement. "That is when the officer fired approximately twice, striking the suspect."
Cravo was taken by ambulance to a helipad and flown to an out-of-town hospital where he later died."