CRAWFORD COUNTY : Gunman who shot deputy targets pursuers, is killed
Posted on Tuesday, March 18, 2008
VAN BUREN — A sheriff’s deputy who avoided injury destroying bombs in Iraq for a year was ambushed and wounded Sunday night by a Crawford County man with a shotgun, police said.
Crawford County sheriff’s deputy Bradley Ingle was struck by shotgun pellets in his face and thigh when he and deputy Brandon Trent answered a call about a disturbance involving a gun at 1311 Oak Grove Road east of Van Buren about 10 p. m. Sunday.
Chief Deputy Ron Brown described Ingle’s wounds as superficial and said he was treated at Summit Medical Center in Van Buren. Ingle also was hit in the chest by pellets but was wearing a protective vest, Brown said.
Loyad James Carol, 42, who police said shot at the deputies, was later shot and killed when he failed to obey orders to surrender the shotgun, according to authorities.
Arkansas State Police Cpl. Robin Kuykendall, a 23-year veteran of the force, and sheriff’s deputy Sgt. Shawn Firestine fired the fatal shots. Both were removed from line-of-duty assignments pending the outcome of an investigation, news releases from the two agencies show. Ingle was shot as he and Trent walked up a dirt driveway toward Carol’s home, said Ken Howard, a sheriff’s office investigator. Trent was walking ahead of Ingle. Carol shot Ingle from the garage of a vacant house about 100 feet from the driveway. “Deputy Ingle returned fire while observing the direction the suspect fled,” states the sheriff’s office news release. Carol’s stepdaughter, Jamie Staggs, said Monday that her stepfather became distraught Sunday night because he thought someone had stolen his shotgun. He threw things around and screamed, she said.
He had been drinking, she said. Violent behavior was unusual for him, she said.
“He’s always been so calm, so mellow. Nothing makes him mad. I don’t understand,” Staggs said Monday.
Carol found the shotgun outside his home and fired a shot into the air, prompting Staggs to call 911.
Shortly after, she heard another shotgun blast followed by several shots in rapid succession, apparently the return fire from Ingle.
“I would never have thought he would have shot an officer,” she said.
Records show Carol had been arrested several times since 1997, the last time in February 2007 for domestic assault, Brown said.
After the shooting, Carol ran into a 10-acre wooded area east of the houses. Deputies, state police troopers, officers from Van Buren and Alma police departments, and the county’s special response team were called in to help search for him.
Police set up a perimeter around the neighborhood, the sheriff’s news release states, as the special response team prepared to go into the woods.
Kuykendall and state police Cpl. Chris Waters used a thermal imaging device and spotted a man hiding in the dense brush a few feet into the woods, the state police news release states.
State police spokesman Bill Sadler said the agency has had thermal imaging equipment for years scattered around the state and used in different situations by highway police, criminal investigators and on helicopters.
Kuykendall and Waters shined their flashlights on Carol, who began to raise the shotgun, load another round into the chamber and point it in their direction. They ordered Carol to put the gun down, but he didn’t respond.
Kuykendall and Firestine fired simultaneously at Carol, wounding him, the sheriff’s office and state police said. Carol was taken to Summit Medical Center in Van Buren, where he died. His body was sent to the Arkansas Crime Laboratory for an autopsy.
Ingle served as a radio operator with the sheriff’s office for a year before being deployed to Iraq with the Arkansas Army National Guard, Brown said. Ingle’s job in Iraq was to locate and destroy roadside bombs, a job he completed without ever being injured, Howard said.
After Ingle returned to the United States last fall, he rejoined the sheriff’s office where he was assigned to patrol early this year, Brown said.
Ingle, Trent and Waters also were placed on leave pending the outcome of the investigation.
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