ST. TAMMANY PARISH, La. — The Mandeville police officer shot and killed Friday is the first law enforcement officer killed in the small St. Tammany Parish city in more than 60 years.
The entire Northshore law enforcement community was reeling Friday afternoon in the aftermath of a traffic-stop-gone-wrong that left a uniformed MDP officer killed and another injured. Two suspects were captured and taken into custody related to the incident.
The officer, whose identity remained undisclosed Friday until officials notified his family, was the first to be killed in Mandeville since 1958.
In that incident 61 years ago, two MDP deputy marshals were shot and killed in an apparent ambush while responding to a domestic dispute.
According to the Officer Down Memorial Page, officers Jake Galloway and Gus Gill were fatally wounded when a man opened fire on them with a 12-gauge shotgun.
The suspect was captured and sentenced to death. He told police he thought the officers were Ku Klux Klansmen that were going to kill him. His death sentence was commuted to life in 1973 and he was released from prison in 1996.
The 1958 incident was the only line of duty death on record in Mandeville.
That would make Friday's shooting the third active officer death in the city's history. The second officer injured was grazed by bullets. He was in the hospital Friday for treatment and was expected to recover, officials said.
“This is a bad day for Mandeville Police Department. The whole law enforcement community is grieving,” said MDP Chief Gerald Sticker.
Stay with WWL-TV and WWLTV.com for the latest information on this developing story