Sacramento, CA- Police Officer Shot/LODD 10-27-06

[Truck4 48]

Date:

Time: 0327hrs

Location: Sloughhouse Road

Departments: Sacramento County Sheriffs, Elk Grove PD, CHP

Description: Sacramento Sheriff's Deputy shot and killed during traffic stop.

Writer: Truck4

"A manhunt was under way Friday after a Sacramento County sheriff's deputy was shot and killed during a traffic stop in a rural area southeast of the state capital.

When dispatchers did not hear from the deputy after the stop at 3:27 a.m. near Sloughhouse, a second patrol car was sent to investigate and found the wounded officer, the sheriff's department said.

Sheriff's deputies, Elk Grove police and the California Highway Patrol searched for a male suspect believed to have fled in a white Chevy van with possible damage to the front end.

Sheriff John McGinness identified the fallen deputy as 38-year-old Jeff Mitchell, a nine-year veteran of the department who had spent the last six years as a deputy. He had been shot once in the head, McGinness said during a morning news conference.

Mitchell, who was patrolling alone, had radioed in to dispatch that he was stopping a van that did not have license plates.

The preliminary investigation indicates the shooting was outside the vehicles and that the deputy may have been trying to take the suspect into custody. The deputy also might have had is own weapon drawn, McGinness said.

When other deputies arrived, they found Mitchell barely alive with a weak pulse. He was pronounced dead at the University of California Davis Medical Center.

Mitchell is the first Sacramento County sheriff's deputy to die this year and third in the last two years. He is survived by a wife and 6-year-old son. "