Officials: Man killed deputies then took life
PENSACOLA (AP) – Police shot a National Guard soldier 16 times after he killed two sheriff’s deputies at a gun range in April, but it was a self-inflicted gunshot wound that ended a chaotic, high-speed chase and shootout, investigators said Thursday.
Joshua Cartwright shot and killed Okaloosa County sheriff’s deputies Burt Lopez and Warren “Skip” York, both 45, on April 25 as they tried to arrest him in the parking lot of rural gun range.
An investigative report released by the Florida Department of Law Enforcement and State Attorney Bill Eddins on Thursday included recordings of dozens of 911 calls placed from the gun range, dashboard video footage of the frantic police chase and shootout and recordings of witness interviews.
The report concluded law officers who shot Cartwright were justified and that the case was closed.
Among the recordings was a heartrending call from a gun range employee who stayed on the line with a dispatcher for eight minutes as he watched the shooting then ran to the fallen deputies after Cartwright sped away.
“Oh my God, you’ll need to get an ambulance out here in a heartbeat. He’s shot three times – one, two three. Two to the chest and one to the stomach. The other deputy, he’s done, he’s shot in the face,” the caller says before realizing the first deputy was also shot in the head.
The man then reports that York is still breathing.
“Come on buddy, stay with me buddy. Come on Skip, buddy, come one,” he says.
Both deputies were taken by helicopter to a Pensacola hospital were they were pronounced dead that afternoon.
The incident was set in motion that morning when Cartwright’s wife filed a domestic violence report after going to a hospital with injuries to her face and arm. The deputies went to the gun range because she told them Cartwright would be there.
The horrific scene that followed is captured in recordings of frantic 911 calls to dispatchers who appear at first not to grasp what a caller is trying to report, as they repeat the phrase “shooting at the gun range?”