A South Carolina police officer died and a second was injured in a \u201cgunfight\u201d Saturday in a park, following a call about a domestic dispute, Columbia police Chief W.H. \u201cSkip\u201d Holbrook said.<\/p>\n
The suspect, a 33-year-old man with a lengthy criminal record, also died, Holbrook said at a news conference in the capital city. <\/p>\n
The deceased officer, 29-year-old Christopher DeLong, had been with the police department for two years and leaves behind a wife and two young children, Holbrook said.<\/p>\n
\u201cOur hearts are broken this evening,\u201d he said, appearing choked up at times. <\/p>\n
DeLong\u2019s wife, in a social media post, praised her husband as the \u201cbest dad to our babies\u201d and said she was \u201cliving a nightmare.\u201d <\/p>\n
After a Saturday night news conference, Holbrook and other law enforcement officials joined in a procession from the hospital. The second officer, David Dymock, was in stable condition, the chief said.<\/p>\n
\u201cI hope that our officers know that they\u2019re not alone in this. We will lean on each other in this tragic time,\u201d Holbrook said. \u201cLet\u2019s pray for this department.\u201d<\/p>\n
The shooting unfolded after a woman called police around 9:30 a.m. Saturday saying a man who she had a restraining order against was destroying property at her home. <\/p>\n
DeLong quickly arrived on scene and learned the suspect had left the residence. The woman gave DeLong a description of the suspect and vehicle description, the chief said.<\/p>\n
Around 10:30 a.m. DeLong left the home, but just minutes later he initiated a call about a suspicious person after seeing a man near a vehicle that matched the woman\u2019s description, Holbrook said. <\/p>\n
Dymock arrived as backup and minutes later radioed that officers \u201cwere hit and a suspect was down,\u201d the chief said.<\/p>\n
The suspect was Adam Tyler Dowdy, a man with a history of arrests across at least four states who had faced charges including disorderly conduct, contempt of court, public intoxication, possession of a controlled substance and probation violations, the chief said.<\/p>\n
Holbrook, who did not take questions at the news conference, said the South Carolina Law Enforcement Division would investigate the shooting. A spokesperson for that agency said in an email that the investigation was ongoing.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"A South Carolina police officer died and a second was injured in a \u201cgunfight\u201d Saturday in a park,…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":830416,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[18],"tags":[351680,23,1927,351678,27459,5613,3071,351679,793,7922,4381,3,8643,4382,5614,795,21,19,22,20,25,24],"class_list":["post-830415","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-united-states","tag-adam-tyler-dowdy","tag-america","tag-ap-top-news","tag-christopher-delong","tag-colombia","tag-columbia","tag-crime","tag-david-dymock","tag-general-news","tag-gun-violence","tag-law-enforcement","tag-news","tag-sc-state-wire","tag-shootings","tag-south-carolina","tag-u-s-news","tag-united-states","tag-united-states-of-america","tag-unitedstates","tag-unitedstatesofamerica","tag-us","tag-usa"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/830415","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=830415"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/830415\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/830416"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=830415"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=830415"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=830415"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}