SELMA, Ala. (AP) — An Alabama police officer on break at the apartment complex where he lived was shot to death early Tuesday and a woman was wounded in what a prosecutor described as an ambush.
Selma Police Officer Marquis Moorer was on duty and went home to get a bite to eat when he was fatally shot, Dallas County District Attorney Michael Jackson said. A woman believed to be his wife or girlfriend was wounded, he said.
The officer was “ambushed,” according to Jackson.
Moorer was on a lunch break when shots were fired from outside, Attorney General Steve Marshall said. The officer was killed and another person inside the residence at Selma Square Apartments was wounded, Marshall said in a statement.
Moorer was “an upstanding officer who took his job seriously,” Jackson said. He was credited with making the city’s first heroin arrest in a decade in 2019, shortly after he joined the police force as a patrol officer.
“The Selma Police Department is devastated,” Chief Kenta Fulford told a news conference. “We’re asking the community for your prayers.”
Authorities did not release the name of the woman who was shot. She was hospitalized but no additional information was available.
No arrests were made immediately, but state police were investigating at the request of local authorities, along with members of a drug task force.
The city of roughly 17,000 is located about 50 miles (80 kilometers) west of the capital of Montgomery.
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