Officer, suspect dead in Ariz. shooting

May 02, 2011|Associated Press

PHOENIX — A police officer from the west Phoenix suburb of Buckeye was killed and a second officer critically wounded in a shootout early yesterday that also left a suspect dead.

Sergeant Tommy Thompson, a Phoenix police spokesman, said the off-duty officers were working a private security job at a nightclub when they got into an altercation that ended with gunfire.

The wounded officer had multiple gunshot wounds. A second suspect also was wounded and is in critical condition. Police are looking for a third suspect who fled the scene.

Thompson said the shooting broke out just after 1 a.m. at a shop called El Gran Mercado that also has an open-air nightclub. The names of the dead and wounded officers and suspects have not been released.

In Ohio, four family members were killed in a house near West Union and a suspect in the shooting deaths was killed in a shootout with police, authorities said yesterday.

Investigators said an 8-year-old girl who slept through the shootings at her house alerted a neighbor Saturday that something horrible had happened overnight. Police had not determined a motive for the attack.

Nearly 100 miles away, one of the girl’s relatives was killed in a shootout with police, who didn’t know that he was suspected in the quadruple homicide.

Randle Lee Roberts II died in the shootout in Columbus on Saturday.