Two deputies were shot while serving a warrant in Walton, the Boone County Sheriff’s Office said Thursday night.
The Boone County Coroner’s Office said the man who fired those shots was 39-year-old Justin Chapman.
The sheriff’s office said deputies were serving a felony warrant regarding overdue child support to a man in a home on Service Road just after 10 p.m. when they were met with “heavy gunfire.”
Two deputies were hit multiple times. One was airlifted while the other was taken by ambulance to UC Medical Center. During a press conference after the shooting happened, Boone County Major Philip Ridgell said both deputies are in stable condition, with one in surgery.
Ridgell said both deputies are veterans of the Boone County Sheriff’s Office.
“This is something that they, themselves and their families, this is a worst nightmare type of situation,” Ridgell said during the press conference.
However, Ridgell noted in a later update that both deputies’ prognoses are “pretty positive.”
Ridgell said the man who fired shots remained barricaded inside his apartment as multiple SWAT and law enforcement agencies worked to get him out. The man did not respond to the team’s attempts to establish communication with him and SWAT deployed gas canisters into the inside of the home.
When the man did not appear to react to the gas, deputies navigated a drone into the home and found the man lying unresponsive in a second-floor bedroom. After entering the home, SWAT team members determined the man was dead from “an apparent self-inflicted gunshot wound.”
Video sent to us by a neighbor showed the moments deputies breach the door of the home and enter moments before what sounds like gunshots can be heard.
Ridgell said no other deputies or residents were injured and a criminal investigation is ongoing. Ridgell said nearby homes were evacuated during the SWAT operation.
Officials have not released the identity of the man who died.