Attorney General Loretta Lynch said Tuesday that she was appalled and saddened by the fatal shooting of two police officers over the weekend in Ohio and Utah.
The killings were the first two line-of-duty deaths of officers so far this year.
“These heinous assaults are reminders of the difficult jobs that our brave law enforcement officers perform every day and of the dangers that they willingly face in the service of their communities,” Ms. Lynch said in a statement issued Tuesday.
Unified Police Department Officer Douglas Barney was working an overtime shift to help pay for his cancer treatments when he was gunned down Sunday morning in a suburb of Salt Lake City while trying to locate two people who had fled from the scene of a car crash.
The man police say killed Officer Barney and injured another officer in a shootout was a wanted parolee who had run away from a drug rehab facility in December. The man, 31-year-old Cory Lee Henderson, was also killed during a firefight with responding police officers.
Officer Thomas Cottrell of the Danville Police Department in Ohio was fatally shot Sunday night by a man who reportedly had set out to kill a police officer. The shooting suspect, Herschel Ray Jones, was taken into custody several hours later. His ex-girlfriend had reported to police earlier in the night that Mr. Jones was armed and “looking to kill an officer.”
The attacks follow the ambush earlier this month of a Philadelphia police officer, who was shot three times in the arm when a man claiming an allegiance to the Islamic State terror group opened fire while running toward his patrol car. The officer survived and gave chase, shooting and wounding his attacker.
Ms. Lynch said the Justice Department will do all it can to support law enforcement officers
“We stand ready to offer any and all appropriate resources to help hold accountable those who threaten our communities, attack our neighbors and seek to harm the peacekeepers within our nation,” she said.
• Andrea Noble can be reached at anoble@washingtontimes.com.
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