A mother was fatally shot outside a California police station Sunday evening (April 7) during a custody exchange with her toddler’s father.

The woman, who has not been identified by police, showed up to the Hawthorne Police Department around 6 p.m., where the child’s father already dropped the child off at the station. It remains unclear if the mother was gaining permanent custody of the child or if the parents regularly had custody exchanges at the police department.

As the mother entered the station to pick up the couple’s 17-month-old child, the child’s father emerged from the parking lot with a shotgun in hand, police told Fox10 Phoenix.

According to Hawthorne police Lt. Gary Tomatani, the man immediately opened fired and struck the woman in front of the child and the woman’s mother, who was also present during the hand off.

Paramedics were immediately dispatched to the station, but the 27-year-old mother was pronounced dead at the scene. No other injuries were reported.

“One of our officers was inside and rushed outside when he heard the gunfire,” Tomatani told the Mercury News. Witnesses told the officer that the man who shot the woman was fleeing the scene.

That’s when an officer-involved-shooting took place.

The officer who went outside reportedly opened fire on the suspect, who was not hit and fled the scene in a vehicle.

Tomatani said the man’s getaway vehicle was abandoned outside a Denny’s restaurant less than 10 blocks away. Officers recovered a gun and the vehicle and set up a perimeter to begin the search.

Around 9 p.m., the search team, composed of several police departments and K-9 units, found the suspect about two blocks away from the Denny’s.

Tomatani said Hawthorne police investigators believe they know the identity of the alleged shooter, but they have not released his name. They have only described the suspect as a man approximately in his 30s.

CBS Los Angeles reports that the victim was terrified of the child’s father, which is why she took extra precautions of having family present at the hand off.

In a press conference, Lt. Scott Hoaglund expressed his disbelief.

“I have 30 years with the department and I’ve never seen anything like this before…Typically a police station is a safe place for people to make a child exchange and I would still recommend that people do that,” he told reporters.