An American man has been shot by a police officer in a brief encounter in Suffolk, Virginia and later died at a hospital, authorities say.

The shooting happened Monday night after police responded to reports that an individual was chasing people with a firearm in the 300 block of Causey Avenue around 5:15 pm.

The first officer arrived at the scene and encountered the person who he believed was the suspect. A second officer also arrived shortly after.

Following a short encounter, the first officer shot at the suspect for an unidentified number of times. The suspect, whose identity was unknown, was taken to Sentara Norfolk General Hospital where he was pronounced dead.

Police have not released any details about whether the suspect threatened the officer or attempted to use his weapon.

Authorities have recovered a weapon at the scene, but it has not been determined if it is real or fake, a city spokesperson said.

Police are still investigating the incident and gathering clues. The officers involved have been placed on administrative leave.

Police in the United States have killed about 1,150 people as of December 15 of this year, with the largest police departments disproportionately killing at least 321 African Americans, according to data compiled by an activist group.

The group, who runs the Mapping Police Violence project, said most police departments did not provide figures on police-involved fatalities, so its data comes from three crowd-sourced databases.