Three Florida sheriff’s deputies were shot, one fatally, in an ambush inside an Eustis home late Friday, officials said.
Lake County Sheriff Peyton Grinnell said two deputies responding to reports of a disturbance at around 8 p.m. found a home with a kicked-in door.
“When the deputies entered the home, there was a lot of gunfire,” the sheriff added.
One deputy was injured and trapped inside the home while his colleague managed to retreat after suffering injuries.
More deputies arrived along with a SWAT team and entered the home searching for the injured deputy only to be met with “a hail of gunfire” that wounded a third deputy.
The trapped deputy died of his wounds. The two others suffered critical injuries, the sheriff said.
“Just horrific when you have one of your own inside of a home and you can’t get to him,” Grinnell said adding that two suspects were killed and a third wounded in the shootout.
“We have equipment for that and that’s the reason we have this equipment, and we tore the home apart to get in there so we could get that deputy out of there,”
“It was a chaotic scene from the start until the end.”
