EATONVILLE, Wash. (AP) — A man has died and two Pierce County sheriff’s officers have been critically injured in a shooting southest of Tacoma, authorities in Washington state said Monday.
Pierce County Sheriff’s spokesman Ed Troyer said that one sergeant and one deputy were shot Monday at 8:48 p.m. while responding to a dispute between two brothers near Eatonville, a rural community in the Cascade foothills.
Troyer told reporters at the scene that one of the brothers wanted the other out of the house.
Sheriff’s were called and were greeted at the door by one brother, while the other was in the house arming himself, Troyer said. When the deputies entered the house, the second brother opened fire, hitting one of the officers multiple times.
“This is somebody that was laying in wait for our guys, armed themselves, with the intent on shooting them,” Troyer told reporters near the shooting scene. “There’s not much we’re going to be able to do when somebody is hiding and arming themselves and we have somebody else inviting us into the residence and the second person opens fire on us.”
Officers were able to return fire and kill the suspect, Troyer said.
“Most people of the communtity as we have seen in the last few weeks have a tremendous regard for (law enforcement),” Pierce County Sheriff Paul Pastor said at the scene late Monday night. “But there are people in the community that don’t come from there, and that’s the people we deal with day after day.”
Troyer said just after midnight Tuesday that one of the officers was taken to Madigan Army Medical Center and was in serious condition. The other officer was airlifted to Harborview Medical Center in Seattle and remained in critical condition.
Pastor said before midnight that he was headed to the hospitals to visit both officers.
Television cameras showed police holding up sheets to protect the privacy of one of the officers after arriving at Harborview Medical Center.
On Nov. 29, authorities said a gunman singled out four Lakewood officers and spared employees and other customers at a coffee shop in Parkland, a Tacoma suburb about 35 miles south of Seattle. He then fled, but not before he was apparently shot in the torso by one of the dying officers.
Killed were Sgt. Mark Renninger, 39, and Officers Ronald Owens, 37, Tina Griswold, 40, and Greg Richards, 42.
After a two-day manhunt, Maurice Clemmons was shot to death by a Seattle police officer.
Authorities said Clemmons singled out the officers and spared employees and other customers at the coffee shop in Parkland, a Tacoma suburb about 35 miles south of Seattle. He then fled but not before one of the dying officers shot him in the torso.
Prosecutors said several members of a network of family and friends have been arrested for allegedly helping him elude capture.
The killing of the four officers came a month after Seattle Officer Timothy Brenton was killed as he sat in his patrol car Halloween night. Christopher Monfort, 41, has been charged with aggravated first-degree murder in Brenton’s death.
