A Florida sheriff’s deputy was killed and two other deputies were injured while trying to reach the first deputy in what police called an ambush inside a home.
The three deputies were shot at a home in Eustis, Florida, on Friday night, Lake County Sheriff Peyton Grinnell said during a news conference at the scene.
Two suspects were killed and a third was injured when police stormed the home in an attempt to rescue an officer who had been shot and was trapped inside, Grinnell said.
Police received a report of a disturbance around 8 p.m. Two police officers went to some houses on the same street as the caller and found a door that appeared to have been broken into.
“When the officers entered the house, there were a lot of gunshots,” Grinnell said.
One deputy was shot and trapped inside while the other retreated. More officers arrived and formed a team to enter the home and rescue the deputy, but were met with “a hail of gunfire” and another deputy was hit, Grinnell said.
The deputy who was the first shot and trapped inside did not survive, he said.
The second deputy suffered a shoulder injury and was in stable condition. A third officer was hit multiple times in the armpit, groin and stomach and was undergoing surgery, said Grinnell, who did not immediately identify the officers involved.
“It’s horrible when you have one of your own inside a house and you can’t get to them,” Grinnell said, explaining that SWAT team members were involved in re-entering the house in Eustis, about 37 miles (59 kilometers) northwest from Orlando.
“We have equipment for that and that’s why we have that equipment, and we destroyed the house to get in there so we could get that officer out of there,” Grinnell said. “It was a chaotic scene from start to finish.”
Two suspects were found dead when SWAT entered the home and a third was transported to a hospital, Grinnell said.
There was no history of violent crimes in the home and nothing to indicate the situation would be dangerous, he said.
“They were ambushed,” Grinnell said.
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