RALEIGH, N.C. -- A sheriff’s deputy was killed along a dark stretch of road in North Carolina and authorities were searching Friday for whoever fired the shots.
“We will find who’s responsible for this loss. Even in the midst of the hurt and the pain, we ask for prayers, we ask for patience as we go about finding out what happened and who’s responsible,” Wake County Sheriff Gerald Baker said at a news conference early Friday morning.
The sheriff’s office tweeted that the deputy was fatally shot in the line of duty after 11 p.m. Thursday. It happened on a dark section of Battle Bridge Road adjacent to open land about a quarter mile from a gas station, sheriff’s office spokesperson Eric Curry said by telephone.
“We don't know if it was a traffic stop,” Curry said. “We're trying to gather why the deputy stopped where he did.”
Law enforcement officers from multiple agencies were in the area Friday to join “a manhunt for the perpetrator or perpetrators,” Curry said.
Several sheriff’s deputies have been shot and wounded in recent weeks in North Carolina. Sgt. Matthew Fishman of the Wayne County Sheriff’s Office was killed last week. He was one of three deputies shot while trying to serve involuntary commitment papers at a home south of Goldsboro on Aug. 1.
