A St. Paul police officer and community members are “unbelievably lucky” they weren’t shot when a man opened fire with an AR-15-style rifle toward a marked squad, the police chief said Tuesday.

Investigators found the rifle, which was stolen, still loaded on the front passenger seat of the suspect’s vehicle in the Summit-University neighborhood. There were eight spent shell casings inside the vehicle — it was armor-piercing ammunition intended to go through steel, said Police Chief Axel Henry.

At about 11 p.m. Monday, a St. Paul officer was working on a DWI and traffic detail, and saw a driver make several traffic violations. He tried to pull the vehicle over in the area of Central Avenue and Chatsworth Street, but the driver kept going after the officer activated his squad’s emergency lights. The officer followed until he lost sight of it.

Soon after, another officer found the vehicle less than a half a mile from where the officer originally tried to stop it. The officer pulled up to investigate and the driver “again took off,” Henry said.

“Our officer began to follow that car, and the occupant of that vehicle began shooting at the officer, shooting through the rear windshield of his vehicle, back towards our police car,” Henry said.

The vehicle was in the area of St. Anthony Avenue and Western Street when the officer saw several muzzle flashes and the rear window of the suspect’s vehicle shattered.

The officer didn’t return fire and pursued the vehicle for about a mile. The driver crashed into a parked vehicle in the 800 block of Fuller Avenue and ran. Officers took the driver, identified as a 26-year-old man, into custody “after a brief physical fight,” Henry said.

The man was taken to Regions Hospital to be evaluated due to the crash. He was then booked into the Ramsey County jail on suspicion of attempted murder, assault, fleeing police in a vehicle, possession of a firearm by an ineligible person and possession of a stolen firearm. The Ramsey County Attorney’s Office was reviewing a case for potential charges against him as of Tuesday.

Police found another magazine with more ammunition in the vehicle, along with suspected cocaine and fentanyl on the man.

Officers checked the area and didn’t locate anyone who’d been shot or residences damaged by gunfire, but Henry is asking anyone to come forward if there was property struck by gunfire.

“We think this is obviously a very important and a very dangerous case for our city,” Henry said.

He said he wanted to emphasize that St. Paul police arrest about 4,500 people a year and officers do not use force in 99.7% of arrests.

“We are grateful that this person was brought into custody and that no one in our community, none of our officers, and even (the suspect) was (not) injured,” Henry said. “… There are decisions made by everyone involved here. And clearly this person made some terrible decisions last night.”

When the suspect was 18 in 2017, he received an 11-year sentence for shooting and critically injuring a 19-year-old during an attempted robbery in St. Paul the year before. Most people sent to prison in Minnesota serve two-thirds in custody and the remaining on supervised release in the community.

The suspect was put on intensive supervised release in the beginning of March and, later that month, he was arrested again for a weapons charge, Henry said. He was charged and bail was set at $100,000, which he was out on, according to the police chief.