Two fugitives were lying in wait behind a fallen tree at a Braxton County campsite and opened fire when U.S. marshals and West Virginia troopers tried to arrest them, a U.S. marshal said Tuesday.
The officers returned fire, killing 26-year-old Dale Maverick Hudson, of Burnsville, and wounding 36-year-old Peggy Chaffin, of Portsmouth, Ohio. None of the officers was injured, said Alex Neville, chief deputy U.S. marshal for the Northern District of West Virginia.
"They gave multiple commands for them to surrender, to lie down on the ground," Neville said in a telephone interview.
Hudson died at the scene of Monday's shootout: a wooded area near Three Lick Road, near Orlando. Chaffin was taken to a Morgantown hospital. Neville said Chaffin was in stable condition Tuesday after surgery.
Chaffin was wanted by marshals in Eastern Kentucky on an escape charge after she walked away from a halfway house. Hudson was wanted in Eastern Kentucky on parole charges, Neville said. He did not know the relationship between Chaffin and Hudson.
Marshals developed information that Chaffin was with Hudson in West Virginia. The investigation led to the woods in Braxton County, where the pair had set up camp.
A special-response team of three deputy marshals and 12 West Virginia State Police troopers was called in to arrest the pair after a surveillance team saw that Hudson was armed, Neville said. A deputy U.S. marshal aboard a West Virginia National Guard helicopter spotted the fugitives lying in wait as the officers approached the site around 2 p.m. Monday.
"They had sought cover, and we believe they were ready to engage officers by deadly force," he said.
Two rifles were found at the site after the shootout.
The U.S. Marshals Service's Office of Professional Responsibility and a shooting review board will investigate the shootout, Neville said.
Lt. Michael Baylous, State Police spokesman, said preliminary information suggests officers responded appropriately.
"We're very fortunate officers weren't killed or injured out there during this incident," he said.
Baylous said troopers with the Special Operations Unit responded because of the high-risk nature of the assignment and the large area that needed to be searched. Police have not said if marshals or troopers fired the fatal shots.
Monday's shootout was the second fatal police shooting in West Virginia in less than a week. On Nov. 5, a sheriff's deputy fatally shot 48-year-old David Romanoski when a group of deputies attempted to arrest someone else for an armed robbery.
The deputies were searching a residence in Morgantown when they encountered Romanoski, who had a shotgun and a handgun, Morgantown Police Chief Ed Preston said in a news release. Romanoski was shot during the encounter and died at a local hospital.
Preston said Romanoski lived at the residence.
The deputies went there to arrest Justin Knisell, who later turned himself in to the Monongalia County Sheriff's Office. A second robbery suspect, Isaac Barker, is being sought.