By ROBIN FITZGERALD
Sun Herald (Miss.)
A Stone County Justice Court judge on Monday morning denied bond for the man charged with shooting two Wiggins police officers on Sunday night.
A dozen law enforcement officers flanked Judge Theresa Dearman’s courtroom when suspect Ronald Husands heard the charges against him - two counts of capital murder.
Husbands is being returned to the Stone County Regional Correctional Facililty.
The two deceased officers were identified as Odell Fite, 48, and Brandon Breland, who was in his early 20s. Fite was the former police chief in New Augusta and had worked previously for the Wiggins Police Department, returning in September.
Fite and Breland were reportedly responding to a domestic disturbance when they were found dead outside a mobile home.
Husbands was arrested Sunday night after surrendering to law enforcement officers at his home in the Maxie community in Forrest County, according to Stone County Sheriff Mike Farmer. Maxie is south of Hattiesburg on U.S. 49.
Farmer said the two officers responded to a domestic disturbance call at 8:01 p.m. Sunday at a mobile home next to J.F. Miller Timber Co.
“From what I gather, they (the Wiggins Police Department) were unable to reach (the officers) by radio,” Farmer said. “My deputies and an investigator found them. They had been shot.”
Farmer said the officers were found outside the mobile home.
Farmer said the resident of the mobile home is a patient at Forrest General Hospital for an unrelated medical condition. He did not know who was at the home at the time of the shooting.
The shooting investigation has been turned over to the Mississippi Highway Patrol.
Kay Fite said Monday that her husband treated everyone with respect.
“He put 110 percent in his job and his family,” Kay Fite told the Hattiesburg American. “The criminals, he treated them like people. I’m sure the person he dealt with tonight, he didn’t go in there with a cocky attitude.”
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Ofc. Brandon Breland, One of Two Mississippi officers killed