DOBBINS, Calif. (AP) - The Latest on two California deputies shot (all times local):
4:45 p.m.
Yuba County Sheriff Steven Durfor says the suspect in the shooting of two California deputies was found dead inside a home.
Durfor says it appears the suspect was killed when the deputies returned gunfire but that an autopsy will determine how he died.
He says he does not know the name of the man who barricaded himself inside a rural home.
Durfor says the two deputies shot were airlifted to a hospital and arrived “conscious, talkative and stable.”
Authorities say the deputies were responding to reports of an armed and agitated man pulling up plants in the garden of a rural Rastafarian church about 55 miles north of Sacramento.
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3:45 p.m.
The leader of a Rastafarian church says a newly arrived worker in the church’s Northern California marijuana field shot and wounded two deputies.
Heidi Lepp says church members called her Tuesday morning to report that the worker was erratic, armed with a gun and pulling up marijuana plants in Oregon House, about 55 miles north of Sacramento. She told the workers to flee and then called the Yuba County Sheriff’s Department.
The workers fled after shooting the deputies and remains at large. The property is owned by a branch of Lepp’s church. She says 250 plants grew there last year.
Lepp said the suspect showed up at the farm about a month ago.
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3:25 p.m.
A hospital says two California deputies are in serious condition after being shot by a suspect who’s still on the loose.
Nancy Turner of Sutter Roseville Medical Center in the city of Roseville said both deputies were brought there because it’s the trauma center closest to the rural community where they were shot Tuesday.
She says both are in serious condition and underwent surgery. She wouldn’t release any other information.
Authorities say the deputies were responding to reports of an armed and agitated man pulling up plants in the garden of a rural Rastafarian church about 55 miles north of Sacramento.
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1:15 p.m.
Two Northern California deputies were undergoing surgery for wounds sustained in a shootout with a suspect described as a disgruntled member of a church that identifies on social media as a sect of the marijuana-embracing Rastafarian religion.
Yuba County Sheriff’s spokeswoman Leslie Carbah says she doesn’t know the condition of the two officers shot Tuesday in a rural community about 55 miles north of Sacramento. She says the deputies were responding to call of an armed and agitated church member pulling up plants. Carbah says the suspect engaged the deputies in a gunbattle before fleeing and remains at large.
Karen Hisken, who runs an equestrian facility near the scene, says she can see police action from her yard but that she has not been asked to evacuate the area. Hisken has lived in the area since 1988 and says she is not familiar with any type of Rastafarian church.
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This item has been corrected to show that the shooting happened Tuesday, not Friday.
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12:12 p.m.
Two Northern California sheriff’s deputies were shot and wounded Tuesday after they responded to reports of an armed and agitated suspect, authorities said.
No arrests were made, and the conditions of the deputies were not released.
The Yuba County sheriff’s deputies were shot around 9 a.m. Tuesday in the rural community of Oregon House about 55 miles north of Sacramento.
The sheriff’s department called it “an active critical incident” on Facebook.
The shooting comes a day after two police officers were shot and wounded nearly 200 miles south in the central California city of Los Banos during a struggle with a man who broke into his estranged wife’s apartment. The suspect died.
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This story has been corrected to properly spell Heidi Lepp’s name and her relationship to the farm. It is Lepp, not Leff. She does not own the property. It is owned by a branch of her church.
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