State Trooper Finds Stuck Pickup, Shot Fatally in Head

Passing motorists took man's shotgun away, handcuffed him
By Newser Editors and Wire Services
Posted Aug 24, 2015 2:40 AM CDT
Updated Aug 24, 2015 9:51 AM CDT
State Trooper Finds Stuck Pickup, Gets Shot in Head
This undated image released by the Louisiana State Police via the New Orleans Times Picayune shows Louisiana Senior Trooper Steven Vincent.   (Louisiana State Police/The Times Picayune via AP)

A Louisiana state trooper has died after being shot in the head yesterday by a man whose pickup truck had run into a ditch and who got out of the truck with a sawed-off shotgun, the head of the Louisiana State Police says. Police video shows Senior Trooper Steven Vincent, a 13-year state police veteran in southwest Louisiana and member of a law enforcement family, trying to talk a man out of the vehicle stuck sideways in a ditch, Col. Mike Edmonson said last night. He said the truck door opened and the man, identified as Kevin Daigle, 54, came out with the shotgun. Edmonson said at least two or three buckshot pellets hit Vincent, who fought for his life overnight in a Lake Charles hospital; he died this morning. Vincent leaves a widow and a 9-year-old son.

After the shooting, Edmonson said, Daigle wandered into the road and over to Vincent, asking if he was alive. "You could hear him breathing, telling him, 'You're lucky. You're lucky—you're going to die soon,'" Edmonson said. He said two or three drivers stopped immediately, one of them slewing around on the two-lane highway. That driver wrestled the shotgun away from Daigle, and, with the others, got him to the ground and snapped Vincent's handcuffs on his wrists. As far as he knew, Edmonson said, the Good Samaritans were unhurt. As of last night he said Daigle, who has convictions that include "numerous DWIs," faces charges including attempted first-degree murder of a police officer. (More Louisiana stories.)

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