(Headline USA) Three police officers were fatally shot and two wounded Wednesday in southern Pennsylvania, and the shooter was killed by police, authorities said.
The officers were at the scene, amid rolling farmland, to follow up on a domestic-related investigation that began the previous day.
It was one of the deadliest days for Pennsylvania police this century. In 2009 three Pittsburgh officers responding to a domestic disturbance were ambushed and shot to death by a man in a bulletproof vest.
Condolences began pouring in from police departments across the region on social media and people began leaving flowers at the headquarters of the Northern York Regional Police Department.
The shooting erupted in the area of North Codorus Township, about 115 miles west of Philadelphia, not far from the Maryland line, authorities said.
Dirk Anderson, a farmer who lives across a two-lane country road from the scene, said he was in his shop “when we heard shots,” which he described as “quite a few.” He saw a helicopter arrive and a large police vehicle response.
The two injured officers were in critical but stable condition at York Hospital, authorities said.
Authorities did not identify the shooter, the officers or which police department they belonged to, or describe the circumstances of how they were shot, citing the ongoing investigation.
The emergency response unfolded on a rural road in south-central Pennsylvania. Officers were keeping people well back from the scene, with some 30 police vehicles blocking off roads bordered by a barn, a goat farm and soybean and corn fields.
Another officer in the area was killed in February, when a man armed with a pistol and zip ties entered a hospital’s intensive care unit and took staff members hostage before a shootout that left both the suspect and an officer dead.
Adapted from reporting by the Associated Press
