California shooting spree kills two deputies

Marcelo Marquez, 34, and a female companion, who were described on Twitter by the California Highway Patrol as armed and dangerous, were taken into custody, police said.

The incident began on Friday morning in the parking lot of a Motel 6 when a deputy, later identified as Danny Oliver, 47, approached a vehicle considered to be suspicious, said Sacramento County Sheriff Lieutenant R.L. Davis.

Someone inside the car fired multiple rounds at Oliver, who was struck in the chest. On Friday afternoon, Sacramento Sheriff Scott Jones said that Oliver had died of his wounds at the University of California, Davis, Medical Center in Sacramento.

“We grieve as a family,” Jones told a news conference. He said that Oliver, a 15-year veteran of the force, left behind a wife and two daughters.

After shooting Oliver, the car’s occupants then carjacked a vehicle nearby, shooting the man who was at the wheel before fleeing, Davis said. Police initially said that the civilian who was carjacked was a woman.

They then stole a third vehicle, a 2002 red Ford F-150 pickup truck, and are believed to have crossed into neighboring Placer County, shooting two sheriff’s deputies there, Davis said.

One of the deputies, 42-year-old Michael David Davis Jr., later died, said Placer County Sheriff Edward Bonner at a news conference.

Davis was a 15-year veteran with the department and died 26 years to the day after his father and namesake, Michael David Davis, was killed while on duty as a sheriff’s deputy in southern California, Bonner said.

The female suspect was taken into custody earlier on Friday afternoon, the Sacramento Bee reported. The Sacramento County Sheriff’s Department confirmed that she was “with law enforcement,” but said it was not clear whether she was still viewed as a suspect.

Marquez was taken into custody around 4 p.m. local time after he was found hiding in a suburban home, the Placer County Sheriff’s Department said. Businesses in the town of Auburn, where the man fled, were put on lockdown for much of Friday afternoon. (Reuters)