The Associated Press
LOVELOCK, Nev. (AP) - A suspect in the shooting of two Pershing County sheriff’s deputies was killed Monday after a daylong standoff with a SWAT team at his northern Nevada home near U.S. Interstate 80, the sheriff said.
It was not immediately clear whether the man took his own life or was killed by shots fired from law officers, Pershing County Sheriff Ron Skinner said. An investigation was continuing.
“All I can tell at this time is it was by a gunshot wound. We don’t know whether it was self-inflicted or not,” he told KOLO-TV of Reno Monday night.
The suspect, described by neighbors as an “anti-government protester,” barricaded himself in his Imlay home before noon Monday after he shot two deputies who were serving him with an arrest warrant, said Trooper Chuck Allen, a spokesman for the Nevada Highway Patrol in Reno.
The deputies’ wounds were not life-threatening. One was hit in the leg. The other avoided serious injury when a shot fired at his chest hit a bulletproof vest.
The suspect was believed to be armed with a hunting rifle and pistol, Allen said.
At about 5 p.m., a police SWAT team fired rounds of bean bags, rubber bullets and tear gas into his home and Skinner confirmed about an hour later that the suspect was dead. His name was being withheld pending notification of next of kin, authorities said. His body was found in a room in the back of the house.
A Washoe County SWAT team went to the scene 130 miles east of Reno to assist in the standoff shortly before noon Monday and a frontage road along the interstate was blocked off.
Neighbors said the man they knew as “Josh” had pointed a gun at several people over the past week.
“He’s always threatening to shoot people’s dogs,” Jesse Ford told KTVN-TV of Reno.
“Then he pointed a gun at a woman the other day and went `bang’ ... then put the gun up in the air and pulled the trigger and fired it off,” Ford said.
NHP said deputies initially tried to serve the arrest warrant on Thursday for unlawfully shooting a gun and had kept the home under surveillance since then.
Skinner said the suspect came out of his home Monday morning about 10 a.m. and was confronted by the deputies.
“At that time, he started to shoot at the officers,” Skinner said.
Sgt. Mike Stevens was shot in the leg and taken by helicopter to Washoe Medical Center in Reno, where a bullet was surgically removed. Deputy John Rogers was treated at a local hospital and released.
Ford said earlier Monday that officers had shown great patience in the ordeal.
“They’ve given him days and days and days to come out of his house. They’ve been very easy on him. They don’t want to kill him if they can help it,” Ford said.
Mike and Mary Munoz of Imlay said it was shocking to have such violence in the small rural town, which is about 40 miles east of Lovelock.
“It makes you think twice,” Mary Munoz told KRNV-TV of Reno. “You don’t know what town to really go into any more.”