A man who was holding captive his wife who threatened to leave him and their daughter shot dead three police officers from Floyd County, Kentucky, who had come to the scene, and a dog, and injured five other people.
The Floyd County Sheriff’s Office identified the fatal victims as Prestonburg Police Capt. Ralph Frasure; Sheriff’s Deputy William Petry; and the dog’s handler, Jacob Chaffins.
The suspect, identified as Lance Storz, aged 49, was detained by the authorities after about five hours of confrontation with officers who arrived at his home with an arrest warrant for an incident of domestic violence.
Storz, who was armed with a rifle, opened fire from inside and struck officers Thursday afternoon.
Storz practically barricaded himself inside the house and held both his wife and his daughter captive. The Kentucky State Police reported that four other officers were injured and that one of these remains in critical condition. A fifth survivor was identified as a civilian.
The suspect’s wife and daughter were uninjured in the confrontation.
“They found…pure hell when they arrived. They didn’t have a chance,” Floyd County Sheriff John Hunt described to reporters at the scene.
According to the police chief, the officers had not even made initial contact with the man when he began shooting . It took hours to establish where exactly the man was shooting from, since he had a plan.
“(The suspect) was a pure terrorist…he was a terrorist on a mission,” the sheriff described.
The defendant remains in prison Pike County.