Two police officers in Virginia were shot and killed during a traffic stop late Friday night, authorities said, and the suspected shooter was later found dead.
Officers Christopher Reese and Cameron Girvin were on patrol when they spotted a blue Hyundai Sonata with an expired license plate and attempted to pull the vehicle over, but the sedan refused to stop, Virginia Beach Police Chief Paul Neudigate said at a news conference on Saturday. The officers followed the car before the deadly shooting occurred, Neudigate said.
“We do have video of all of it and I’ll tell you it’s quite horrific,” Neudigate told reporters.
When the two officers approached the sedan and told the driver to exit the car, the driver refused and “was immediately argumentative,” Neudigate said.
At some point, the driver got out of the car and got into a tussle with Reese and Girvin. During the tussle, Neudigate said the driver pulled a pistol from his pocket and shot the officers.
“While on the ground defenseless, he shot them a second time,” the police chief said.
“After he executed our officers he calmly walked away.”
Responding officers and paramedics later arrived at the scene and Reese and Girvin were taken to local hospitals where they died from their injuries.
Meanwhile, other Virginia Beach police officers searched the area for the suspect, who was found dead in a shed behind the apartment complex where the traffic stop occurred. The suspect, who Neudigate identified as 42-year-old John McCoy III, believed he died from a self-inflicted gunshot wound. The medical examiner placed his time of death as not long after the traffic stop.
McCoy had one felony conviction from 2009, Neudigate added. It’s a felony for a convicted felon to possess a firearm, but the police chief didn’t go into details about the gun and how it was obtained.
There was another individual in the vehicle with the suspect but no charges are expected, Neudigate said.
The police chief and Virginia Beach Mayor Robert Dyer asked the public for patience as it works on the investigation and “grieve the loss of their own.”
“No words can ease the pain and loss,” Dyer said Saturday.
Rep. Jen Kiggans, who represents Virginia Beach, said in a post on social media that the entire community is mourning the death of the two police officers.
contributed to this report.
