Officers shoot armed man to death outside mosque near Fort Lauderdale

A police task force led by the U.S. Marshals Service encountered the Osceola County man parked in a lot for the Masjid Al-Iman mosque, at 2542 Franklin Drive near Fort Lauderdale.

The man got out of his car holding a weapon, and officers from the Fort Lauderdale and Plantation police departments as well as a deputy marshal all fired their weapons, said Gadyaces Serralta, U.S. marshal for the Southern District of Florida.

Serralta withheld information about the number of bullets fired, how many times the man was struck by gunfire or which officer may have fired the lethal shots.

The dead man’s name also was not released.

Wilfredo Ruiz, a spokesman for the Florida chapter of the Council on American Islamic Relations, said the man who was killed was “not somebody known to the mosque congregants who I have spoken to.”

The shooting drew a large number of police officers to the Franklin Park neighborhood. Patrol cars blocked off streets near the mosque, and traffic and pedestrians could not pass by. A corner of a parking lot at the mosque was blocked off with police tape.

Crime scene investigation trucks from both the Broward Sheriff’s Office and Fort Lauderdale police arrived about 1 p.m.

The residential neighborhood is south of West Sunrise Boulevard and just west of Interstate 95.

This story will be updated; check back for more information.