QUICK CITY, Mo. (AP) - A wanted felon who said he would not go back to prison died in a gunfight with law enforcement officers in northwest Missouri, a county sheriff said.
Ricky Lee Higgins, 54, died after the confrontation Wednesday in a trailer park near Quick City, about 60 miles southeast of Kansas City in Johnson County.
Officers had gone to the area to arrest Higgins on a parole violation, Johnson County Sheriff Chuck Heiss said. After a woman voluntarily left the mobile home, officers saw Higgins trying to escape by crawling out from under the trailer, The Warrensburg Daily Star-Journal reported (https://bit.ly/1lXcQqL ).
Heiss said his officers were “very, very familiar” with Higgins, who was released in December after serving 12 years for receiving stolen property and second-degree burglary.
“He had made statements that he wasn’t going back to jail and if the cops tried to get him he was going to shoot the cops, and the cops would have to kill him,” Heiss said.
When officers yelled at Higgins to surrender, he seemed to comply at first, the sheriff said.
“He puts his left hand up in the air and the deputies began to advance on him, and as they’re advancing, he produces his right hand . (and) a semi-automatic pistol, and he opens fire on the deputies.”
Higgins fired “at least two rounds” and deputies returned about 10 rounds, killing him, Heiss said.
When Higgins was sentenced in 2001, deputies in the Johnson County Court had to wrestle him to the ground when he tried to withdraw his plea as he was being sentenced. He contended during his prison sentence that people had conspired to cause his “illegal incarceration.”
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Information from: Daily Star-Journal, https://www.dailystarjournal.com,
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