By John Hanna and Jack Dura
Associated Press
CARBONDALE, Kan. — Four law enforcement officers were shot Saturday morning while responding to a domestic violence call at a home in a rural area south of Topeka, and a 22-year-old male suspect died of gunshot wounds at the scene.
The suspect’s 77-year-old grandfather was also wounded in the gunfire, but he and the law enforcement officers are all expected to recover, the Kansas Bureau of Investigation said.
The shooting occurred around 10:30 a.m. Three Osage County sheriff’s deputies and one Kansas Highway Patrol trooper were shot, the KBI’s director and the patrol’s superintendent said.
Two deputies underwent surgery at a Topeka hospital and were in good condition, the KBI said, and the third deputy was discharged. The trooper was transferred from the same hospital to the University of Kansas Medical Center in Kansas City, Kansas.
“After being on scene less than 10 minutes, gunfire erupted,” Patrol Superintendent Erik Smith said during a news conference at the Carbondale City Library.
Carbondale is a town of about 1,300 people about 16 miles (26 kilometers) south of Topeka, the state capital, off Interstate 75.
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The shooting stunned neighbors John and Heather Roberts, who live about a mile north of where it occurred on the same two-lane road. They never sensed any problem in any of the family members, such as drugs, alcohol abuse or violence, and they said the suspect’s grandmother gave Christian books to area children she knew.
They said it is not uncommon to see law enforcement vehicles on the road outside their home because they live at the line between Osage County, home to Carbondale, and Shawnee County, home to Topeka, and vehicles turn around there or the counties exchange prisoners.
John Roberts said he was putting siding on his barn when two law enforcement vehicles flew down the road in the morning.
“Both of them were running, I would say, well over 100 miles an hour as they went by,” he said. “Then the city of Topeka officers started going by. That’s when I started to really get concerned.”
He said the suspect visited the shop he has at his home to return tools and was “a good kid.” Roberts added that many families in the area own guns because hunting is a common hobby, and that was the case with this family.
“I love the family. They’re great people,” Heather Roberts said, adding that she and her husband were praying for the wounded officers too.
She said every time the suspect visited their home, he would give her a hug and he was “very respectful.”
“I don’t know what snapped in him today, but his grandparents loved him very much,” she said.
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Dura reported from Bismarck, North Dakota.
