A Florida sheriff’s deputy was killed and two other deputies were injured when they tried to reach the first officer in what authorities called an ambush shooting at a home.
The three deputies were shot at a home in Eustis, Fla., on Friday night, Lake County Sheriff Peyton Grinnell said during a news conference at the scene.
Two suspects were killed and a third injured when authorities stormed the home in an attempt to retrieve a deputy who had been shot and was trapped inside, Grinnell said.
Authorities received a report of a disturbance at 8 p.m. local time. Two deputies went a few houses down the street from the caller and found a door that appeared to have been kicked in.
“When the deputies went into the home, there was a lot of gunfire,” Grinnell said.
One deputy was shot and trapped inside while the other retreated. More officers arrived and formed a team to enter the house and retrieve the deputy, but were met with “a hail of gunfire” and another deputy was hit, Grinnell said.
The male deputy who was the first shot and trapped inside did not survive, he said.
The other deputy suffered a shoulder wound and was in stable condition. A third deputy was hit in the armpit and groin and stomach area multiple times and underwent surgery, said Grinnell, who did not immediately identify the officers involved.
“Just horrible when you have someone of your own inside a home and you can’t get to him,” Grinnell said, explaining that SWAT team members were involved in re-entering the house in Eustis, about 35 miles northwest of Orlando.
“We have equipment for that and that’s why we have this equipment, and we tore the home apart to get in there so we could get that deputy out of there,” Grinnell said. “It was a chaotic scene from start to finish.”
Two suspects were found dead when SWAT entered the house and a third was taken to a hospital, Grinnell said.
There was no history of domestic violence and nothing to suggest the situation was dangerous, he said.
“They were assaulted,” Grinnell said.