Incident in US-KS

A 26-year-old deputy sheriff with the Sedgwick County Sheriff’s Office was shot at 12 p.m. on September 28 in an ambush in Wichita. The deputy, who had more than 1 year of law enforcement experience, had been dispatched a few minutes earlier to investigate a report of larceny. At 12:01 p.m., he radioed dispatch to report that he had been shot. Apparently, the deputy arrived at the residence but was unable to get anyone to answer the front door. He asked the dispatcher to contact the complainant on the telephone, which the dispatcher did. The complainant instructed the deputy via the dispatcher to meet him behind the residence. The deputy went to the rear of the residence, and the man, who was hiding behind a tree, immediately opened fire with a .30-30 lever-action rifle, wounding the deputy in his chest, the front below his waist, and fatally in his back, where at least one of the bullets penetrated his body armor. The force of the shot knocked the victim deputy to the ground. The man approached the deputy and attempted to shoot him at close range, but the rifle malfunctioned and did not fire. After a struggle, the man took the deputy’s service weapon, a 9 mm semiautomatic handgun, and pointed it at the deputy. The deputy, still lying on the ground, lifted his leg in an effort to protect himself from the bullet when the man fired the weapon, and the bullet went through the deputy’s foot and lodged in his bulletproof vest. The man fled the scene, and it was then that the victim deputy radioed dispatch that he had been shot twice. Assisting deputies arrived, secured the scene, and administered emergency medical treatment to the victim deputy until an ambulance arrived. The victim deputy was transported to a local medical center where he underwent surgery, but he succumbed to his wounds later that day. In the meantime, officers from the Sedgwick County Sheriff’s Office, the Wichita Police Department, the Derby Police Department, the Kansas Highway Patrol (KHP), the Kansas Bureau of Investigation, the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives (ATF), and the FBI responded to the scene of the shooting. They surrounded the house where they believed the shooter was located and attempted negotiations with him, but those attempts were unsuccessful. Eventually they introduced gas into the house and then used a robot with a camera in an effort to find the man. However, the suspect had escaped into a rural area surrounding the house. As two ATF agents and one KHP trooper drove through the field where they believed the suspect was hiding, he fired at them with the service weapon he had taken from the fallen deputy. A brief gun battle ensued, and the suspect was fatally wounded and died at the scene. Investigating officers discovered that the man had remarked earlier that he was going to “kill a cop,” and that he subsequently had called in the false report of larceny. They found a large supply of ammunition for the .30-30 rifle and outdoor clothing in a duffle bag at the scene in addition to the victim deputy’s service weapon. The offender was a 27-year-old man with a prior criminal record that included police assault and violent crime.