UPDATE: Police have apprehended 2 suspects, Curtis Banks, 26 and his 29-year-old brother, Marvin Banks. Earlier story below:
HATTIESBURG, Miss. (AP) — Two police officers died after being shot after a routine traffic stop in the southern Mississippi city of Hattiesburg, prompting a statewide manhunt early Sunday for two suspects considered armed and dangerous, authorities said.
Warren Strain, a spokesman for the Mississippi Department of Public Safety, said one Hattiesburg officer had initially stopped a 2000 Gold Cadillac Escalade in an industrial corridor of that city about 8:30 p.m. CDT Saturday, a second officer arrived afterward to assist him and that’s when shots were fired. Those were reported to be the first deaths on the Hattiesburg police force in three decades.
“Obviously these suspects are armed and dangerous. There is a danger, a threat for sure,” Strain told The Associated Press by telephone early Sunday from the scene, an industrial corridor fronting a housing area. He said officers had told people in the immediate area to “take shelter.”
Strain said both officers died of their injuries at a hospital. He said law enforcement agencies across Mississippi were seeking two men he identified as suspects Curtis Banks, 26, and his 29-year-old brother, Marvin Banks. He said they had left the scene but didn’t elaborate if they were stopped in the Escala
A Hattiesburg Police Department spokesman, Lieut. Jon Traxler, told The AP the officers who died were 34-year-old Benjamin Deen and 25-year-old Liquori Tate.
“All I know right now is that there was a traffic stop and someone started shooting at them and both of the officers were struck,” Traxler said. He said he didn’t know how many shots were fired, or exactly by whom, adding that was now part of the investigation.
After the shooting, law enforcement agents swarmed into the area and surrounding blocks. Many emergency vehicles, their lights flashing, could be seen in an area of apartments near the shooting scene.
Specifics of why the vehicle was stopped and why shooting broke out remained unclear, Strain said. Strain said he also didn’t have further details of the officers’ actions when the shots erupted.
He said the state’s chief law enforcement agency, the Mississippi Bureau of Investigation, had taken up the probe of the shooting.
“That’s still under investigation. The crime scene unit is processing the scene,” said Strain.
He said law enforcement officers were advised, meanwhile, to be on the lookout statewide for the two men, adding their whereabouts were unknown early Sunday.
And Hattiesburg Mayor Johnny DuPree told The Jackson Clarion-Ledger (http://on.thec-l.com/1GWpqRp) he lamented the deaths.
“The men and women who go out every day to protect us, the men and woman who go out every day to make sure that we’re safe, they were turned on (Saturday) night,” DuPree said outside Forrest General Hospital in Hattiesburg, where the officers were taken.
The newspaper reports these are the first Hattiesburg officers to die in the line of duty in 30 years. It said Tate was a recent police academy graduate while Deen was a K-9 officer who had been honored as the department’s “Officer of the Year” in 2012.
A call to DuPree’s office for further comment wasn’t returned early Sunday.
Hattiesburg resident Tamika Mills told The Clarion-Ledger that bystanders came upon the officers on the ground, one rolling about and the other nearby who asked “… ‘Am I dying? I know I’m dying. Just hand me my walkie-talkie.'” Mills told the paper, that the moment was “shocking and heartbreaking.”
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Why have we not heard about this on the major media outlets? I guess it’s okay for black folks to murder the police. Police lives matter!