An Arkansas police officer is in a state of stability after being shot during a confrontation with a man who authorities say kidnapped a 14-year-old North Carolina girl.
LONOKE, Ark. – An Arkansas police officer was hospitalized in stable condition on Sunday after he was shot during a confrontation in a McDonald’s restaurant with a man who was kidnapping a 14-year-old North Carolina girl, authorities said.
The suspect died as a result of an apparently self-inflicted gunshot wound after fleeing from authorities, according to Arkansas State Police. The girl was found safe.
Two police officers from Lonoke, Arkansas, Saturday night confronted the driver of an SUV parked in the fast food restaurant after the vehicle was connected to a child abduction case in North Carolina. Lonoke is about 27 miles east of Little Rock.
The driver, later identified as William Robert Ice, 38, of Jackson Center, Pennsylvania, started firing at the officers as he exited the SUV. State police said one officer was hit while the other, uninjured, was shot when Ice entered the vehicle and fled.
An Arkansas State Trooper spotted the SUV and chased it until the vehicle broke down in a snowdrift. The 14-year-old girl fled from the vehicle and was secured by a state soldier.
Inside the SUV, a trooper found Ice seriously injured by what appears to be a self-inflicted gunshot wound for now. Ice later died in a Little Rock hospital.
Arkansas State Police, working with sheriff’s deputies in Davidson County, North Carolina, and the North Carolina State Bureau of Investigation, determined that the girl had been kidnapped.
According to Arkansas State Police, ice was also sought by Pennsylvania law enforcement authorities in connection with other cases of child predators.