Bullet holes can be seen in the windshield of a stolen car at a southwest Calgary car wash Wednesday. (CBC)

A man shot by a veteran Calgary police officer during an attempted arrest early Wednesday has died.

The man, who was taken to hospital in life-threatening condition with a gunshot wound, died several hours after a confrontation with police in the city's southwest, Duty Insp. Vic Trickett confirmed.

Police said members of the force's High Enforcement Auto Theft Team were covertly following a stolen car at about 3 a.m. when the vehicle — with a driver and one passenger inside — pulled into Western Pride, a 24-hour car wash, in the 3700 block of Richmond Road S.W.

Unmarked police vehicles moved in to block the car's exit from a car-wash bay, and officers tried to get the occupants to surrender.

In a bid to escape, the driver of the stolen car rammed it back and forth into the police vehicles that had boxed it in, said John Dooks, president of the Calgary Police Association, which represents rank-and-file officers. Police were standing outside the vehicles at the time, he added.

Calgary police collected evidence at the scene of the shooting Wednesday morning. (Peter Akman/CBC)

"To prevent him from escaping, to be of greater risk to the officers or to the public, one of our officers used deadly force to stop this person before he endangered any other lives," Dooks said. "Effectively he's using a vehicle as a weapon."

Four shots were fired into the stolen vehicle. Dooks said it would have been difficult for officers to shoot out the tires in such an enclosed space.

"You know he's not going to stop," he said. "You don't stop for police officers, … [you're] not going to stop for pedestrians or [passers-by]."

Raymond Waldron, who lives in an apartment complex behind the car wash, said he was awoken in the middle of the night by the sound of gunshots and called 911.

"We heard like a pop, pop, pop, and it sounded like gunshots. It looked like someone was chasing someone else," he said. "Then later, we found out it was police, they were trying to apprehend or chase someone afterwards."

Dooks said the officer who fired the shots was one of his former partners, and has at least 18 years of experience.

Police tried to box in the stolen vehicle at a southwest Calgary car wash. (CBC)

"A very well-seasoned officer, he is a firearms instructor. He's a very calm, cool and collected gentleman," Dooks told reporters.

Any shooting involving an officer triggers an automatic internal investigation. Dooks said he expects the investigation will vindicate the officer.

"No officer likes to be involved in a use-of-force situation where someone dies from it, but we're all trained and expected in a given situation to respond and do what's appropriate," he said.

The car wash, with several cars and trucks in the lot and one in a washing bay, was still blocked off with police tape on Wednesday.

Updates on the incident are now up to the Alberta Serious Incident Response Team, which investigates all shootings involving police, Calgary police said. The team has scheduled a news conference for Thursday morning.