By Marino Eccher and Mara H. Gottfried

St. Paul Pioneer Press

ST. PAUL — The man shot to death by St. Paul police Thursday morning on the West Side set off “frantic” 911 calls with his aggressive behavior and came at officers with a rock, police said.

Before police arrived, he was bloodied and smashing car windows with a pipe, they said. One 911 caller said the man was “gonna hurt somebody,” according to a transcript released by police.

Police Chief Thomas Smith said the two officers who confronted the suspect feared for their lives when he ignored orders to stop and closed on them with a rock bigger than a baseball.

“You don’t always have to have a firearm or a knife to hurt somebody,” he said.

Neither officer was hurt. They’re on administrative leave, which is standard procedure.

The names of neither the man nor the officers have been released. A police spokesman said they’re working to identify the suspect.

Smith said the officers responded after 6 a.m. to 911 calls about a man violently smashing windows. He had a pipe, was throwing rocks and at one point attacked a school bus, the chief said. He didn’t know if children were present.

The caller in the transcript released by police described the man smashing the window of his car as he sat in it near Jerry’s Service Center at Robert and Cesar Chavez streets.

“I was sitting in the car reading the paper and he come up and started smashing,” the caller said.

The man was walking and running up the street and through the neighborhood during the incident, the caller said. At one point, the caller told dispatchers: “He’s gotta be high on something.”

Smith said the man wasn’t “just walking down the street throwing pebbles,” but menacing the neighborhood. The number and tone of 911 calls received “tell us that we were very fortunate today” that no one else was hurt, he said.

Witnesses reported seeing a man struggling with officers before police shot him on Wabasha Street, near Plato Boulevard.

Two baristas at Grumpy Steve’s Coffee on Wabasha Street, Kelsey Goergen and Jenna Johnson, said they saw some of what happened from the coffee shop’s window about 6:30 a.m.