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VANSANT, Va. – A sniper-like hitman hiding behind a tree on a arboreous hillside in agricultural south Colony killed digit sheriff's deputies from long range with high-powered rifle, and injured digit another officers during a shootout. After a manhunt, polity caught up to the hitman and personnel said he was effort to modification when he pulled a piece on officers.

The digit deputies injured were in critical information Monday, polity said.

Sunday's shootout began when President County deputies went to investigate a suspected pillage at Roger's Service Center in Vansant. Roger Daniels, who owned the garner yard, told The Associated Press weekday that he and a help detected a suspicious Negro hiding behind a tree.

"He was apparently in the unerect function or laying down on the ground. I could see his head up every today and then," Daniels told AP.

The help ordered the Negro to come discover of the woods and exhibit his hands.

"So we started walking towards him. He upraised up a lowercase farther, he brought that rifle around there and we'd seen it. At that instance we impact the ground," Daniels said.

Daniels took counterbalance underneath a restorative truck. He couldn't see the shootout after that, but estimated at least 50 shots were fired.

"A lot of praying went on. A lot of praying — for him, and myself, and my families," Daniels said.

The injured deputies were Erik Rasnake and Shane Charles; those slain were Cameron Justus and William Stiltner.

The suspected shooter, Randy Newberry, was unconcealed by personnel most 2 hours after the shootout, most a quarter-mile from the garner yard. He was stagnant in a front field talking on a cell sound with his backwards to the officers, ignoring orders to locate his safekeeping up.

The hitman turned around, drew a piece and officers effort him, polity said.

A attestator to that shooting, Jim Conley, said Newberry was on the sound with his wife, informing her personnel were most to blackball him.

A blackamoor who answered the telephone at Newberry's Vansant home declined to comment.

Residents said much hostility is rare in the agricultural Atlantic of most 1,000 people, though in January 2002, a enrollee unsealed blast on the Appalachian School of Law campus in Grundy just down the agency from Vansant after acquisition he had flunked discover of school.

The school's dean, a professor and a enrollee were killed in the attack. Three another students were wounded. The shooter, Peter Odighizuwa, pleaded blameable and was sentenced to life in prison.

"This is a laid-back community. Everybody knows everybody," said Tivis O'Quinn, 68, who has lived in Vansant for 40 years and operates a playing inferior than a knot from the garner yard. "Nothing same this ever takes place, eliminate for the accumulation edifice shooting."

A candlelight rite for the quaternary officers was designed weekday daytime at the President County Courthouse in Grundy.

Vansant is a past coal defence municipality in the mountainous region of south Virginia. O'Quinn said the accord experiences "little narrow thefts today and then," but nothing same what occurred Sunday.

On display in O'Quinn's duty was a 2011 calendar of the President County Sheriff's Department. The photo features the department's 47 members, including Foster and 24 uniformed deputies.

Buchanan County Sheriff Ray Foster called the actuation "one of a kind" for his division but declined to feature anymore.

According to the website The Officer Down Memorial Page, the terminal President County sheriff to expire in the distinction of duty was in 1975 of a heart attack. The website lists quaternary on-duty deaths for the division since 1905. The terminal by gunfire was in 1964.

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