4 officers killed in Charlotte shooting while serving warrant identified -

Authorities are trying to piece together how an attempt to serve a warrant ended in a gunfight that left four law enforcement officers dead and four others injured in a Charlotte neighborhood Monday.

The man the officers were pursuing, who was wanted on a charge of possession of a firearm by a felon, was also killed in the shootout. Investigators said they found an AR-15-style rifle and a handgun on the property.

By Tuesday, officials had identified those killed as Charlotte-Mecklenburg police officer Joshua Eyer, Deputy U.S. Marshal Thomas M. Weeks Jr. and North Carolina Department of Adult Correction officers Sam Poloche and William “Alden” Elliott. All were members of a U.S. Marshals Service fugitive task force that officials said focused on taking into custody violent and dangerous suspects.

“They were good ones, people that you could trust, people that you could count on,” North Carolina Gov. Roy Cooper (D) said of the officers during a news conference Tuesday.

The shooting unfolded when task force members approached a two-story home in the 5000 block of Galway Drive about 1:30 p.m. to serve warrants to Terry Clark Hughes Jr. The 39-year-old was being sought for eluding arrest in addition to being a felon in possession of a firearm, officials said.

Hughes opened fire from the second story of the house, Charlotte-Mecklenburg Police Chief Johnny Jennings said during the news conference, and unloaded several rounds within seconds.

An armored vehicle responded to help remove the wounded officers. Hughes came out of the house with a gun, and officers “perceived an imminent deadly threat” and shot him, according to police. After SWAT negotiations, a woman and a 17-year-old girl inside the house came out. Neither of them is facing charges, Jennings said.

Authorities said the four slain officers were taken to a hospital, where three were pronounced dead and the fourth died several hours later.

Investigators are still determining the timeline of the shooting. Police will be scouring the home for evidence and picking up at least 100 rounds of ammunition, Jennings said, but it’s still not known if there were other shooters. He said officers reported being shot at from the second floor and multiple rooms of the home but that a single shooter could have been moving and shooting from different places.

Authorities said they are making progress investigating where the AR-15-style rifle and 40-caliber handgun were purchased and how Hughes, a felon, came to obtain a firearm.

Jennings described the suspect as having an “extensive” criminal history. Online records show Hughes served time in prison after being convicted on a felony charge of breaking into and entering a building in November 2011.

In October 2012, he was convicted of possessing a firearm as a felon and sentenced to additional time.

President Biden, who called the North Carolina governor and the Charlotte mayor, expressed his sympathies in a statement Monday night. He described the officers who were killed as “heroes who made the ultimate sacrifice, rushing into harm’s way to protect us.” In the statement, he also called on Congress to “ban assault weapons and high-capacity magazines, require safe storage of guns, and pass universal background checks and a national red-flag law.”

“We must do more to protect our law enforcement officers,” he said. “That means funding them — so they have the resources they need to do their jobs and keep us safe. And it means taking additional action to combat the scourge of gun violence.”

Officials said the four other officers injured in the shooting were taken to a hospital. At least two have been released. Jennings said he expected all of the injured officers to make a full recovery.

Since 2005, 46 first responders have died in 21 mass killings, according to a database compiled and maintained by the Associated Press, USA Today and Northeastern University. In six of those, first responders were the only victims. The Washington Post defines a mass killing as a shooting with four or more dead, not including the shooter.

Monday’s shooting was not the first time this year that an officer was killed while trying to serve papers. In January, a deputy was fatally shot while serving a warrant in Mountain View, Ark. The next month a police sergeant in Sheridan, Wyo., was fatally shot while serving a trespass warning.

In the Charlotte shooting, officials said, all four of the officers who died were fathers with multiple years of service under their belts.

Eyer had been with the police department six years. A line of police cars escorted a vehicle carrying Eyer’s body through the streets of Charlotte that were shut down by firefighters Monday night. Mayor Vi Lyles said she saw medical workers crying as they loaded Eyer’s body. A week before he was killed, the department posted on Facebook that Eyer has been named officer of the month for his area of the city. He is survived by a wife and a son.

Poloche and Elliott had served 14 years with the prisons, working for several years as probation and parole officers before joining the task force, according to the agency. Poloche, 42, is survived by his wife and two children; Elliott, 46, is survived by his wife and child.

Weeks — a 48-year-old who went by “TW” — spent eight years with U.S. Customs and Border Protection before starting with the U.S. Marshals in February 2011 at D.C. Superior Court. In November 2014, according to the agency, he transferred to the office in Charlotte. He is survived by his wife and four children.

Praveena Somasundaram contributed to this report.

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