An Arkansas police officer is in stable condition after being shot during a confrontation with a man the authorities claim to have kidnapped a 14-year-old girl from North Carolina
LONOKE, Ark. An Arkansas police officer was hospitalized in stable condition on Sunday after being shot during a confrontation at a McDonald’s restaurant with a man who was kidnapping a 14-year-old girl from North Carolina, officials said.
The suspect died of an apparently self-inflicted gunshot wound after escaping from authorities, according to Arkansas State Police. The girl was found safe.
Two police officers from Lonoke, Arkansas, confronted the driver of an SUV parked at a fast-food restaurant on Saturday night after the vehicle was connected to a North Carolina kidnapping case. Lonoke is located about 27 miles (43 kilometers) east of Little Rock.
The driver, later identified as William Robert Ice, 38, of Jackson Center, Pennsylvania, started shooting police officers when he got out of the SUV. One police officer was hit while the other, who was not injured, responded with shots when Ice got into the vehicle again and fled, according to state police.
An Arkansas state policeman spotted the SUV and chased it until the vehicle was inoperable on a snow bank. The 14-year-old girl fled the vehicle and was protected by a state police officer.
Inside the SUV, a soldier found Ice seriously injured from what appears to be a self-inflicted gunshot wound. Ice later died in a Little Rock hospital.
The Arkansas State Police, working with the sheriff’s deputies in Davidson County, North Carolina, and the North Carolina State Bureau of Investigation, determined that the girl had been kidnapped.
Ice was also wanted by Pennsylvania law enforcement officials in connection with other cases of infant predators, according to the Arkansas State Police.