Associated Press
KOKOMO, Ind. — A deputy wounded in a gunfight with a suspect that left another deputy dead remains hospitalized but is faring well, a central Indiana sheriff said Monday.
Howard County Sheriff Steve Rogers said Sgt. Jordan Buckley “is doing very well” following Sunday’s shooting inside a mobile home in Russiaville, about 60 miles north of Indianapolis.
Deputy Carl Koontz was wounded in the shooting and died later Sunday at an Indianapolis hospital.
SWAT officers found the gunman, 25-year-old Evan T. Dorsey, dead inside the mobile home about two hours after the gunfight ended, Rogers said.
The officers had been trying to serve a search and arrest warrant on Dorsey, who was wanted in adjacent Clinton County for failing to appear for a court hearing on a syringe possession charge. He had already served time in state prison on drug-related charges.
State Police Sgt. John Perrine said an autopsy is expected to determine whether Dorsey died from police gunfire or took his own life.
“That will give us more information about what actually happened inside the trailer yesterday morning,” Perrine said at a Monday news conference with Rogers at the sheriff’s department in Kokomo.
Rogers said Koontz’s body would be returned Monday afternoon to Kokomo and that the deputy’s widow, Kassandra Koontz, had requested a moment of silence Monday morning for her late husband.
He said the killing of Koontz, who was the father an 8-month-old son, had left his department shaken and in mourning.
“You can only imagine the loss here, a wife with a small child,” he said. "... It’s just what you can imagine, as far as the stress and the sadness we’re dealing with right now.”
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