SALT LAKE CITY (AP) â?? The veteran Utah police officer who was shot to death over the weekend was working overtime to pay for his cancer treatments when he encountered a fugitive who went missing from a drug rehab center for parolees, officials said.
Unified police officer Douglas Scott Barney, 44, had been on the force 18 years when he encountered Cory Lee Henderson, 31, Sunday morning in a residential area near a church in the suburb of Holladay, about 8 miles southeast of downtown Salt Lake City.
Authorities say the incident began with a car crash involving Henderson and a woman in a BMW, when the two walked away from the wreck. Barney found Henderson nearby and the officer was shot in the head. Barney died hours later at a hospital.
Other officers responded and exchanged gunfire with Henderson, who died at the scene.
Officer Jon Richey, 51, was shot once by a bullet that went through both legs. His condition was upgraded Monday to fair after he had emergency surgery. Unified police Detective Chuck Malm said Richey is expected to make a full recovery.
Police said they were still searching for the woman who was with Henderson at the time of the crash and on Monday had no updates on the case.
The fatal police shooting is among the first on-duty officer deaths in the country for 2016 and the first ever for the Unified Police Department since it formed in 2010 to serve communities in the Salt Lake City area.
Barney, a married father of three teenagers, had volunteered to work overtime Sunday to help pay for his medical treatments after surviving bladder cancer, the Deseret News reported. The Barney family declined to comment Monday.
"His family has dealt with the possibility that they could lose their dad for 12 years, and he was in remission again and doing well," said unified police Lt. Lex Bell. "He was back to his old self, his color was good, and he was laughing and slapping you on the back again. And then they lose him to a bullet."
Bell, who was Barney's partner in the 2000s after both graduated from the police academy, told the Deseret News that Barney was a "boisterous, funny, caring, big old teddy bear of a man." He became a police officer after working at the Salt Lake County Jail because Barney wanted to help people and loved children.
Barney was serving as a school resource officer at Eisenhower Junior High School in Taylorsville when his cancer returned. Students in 2010 organized a dodgeball tournament to raise money for his treatment, which they called "Battle for Barney."
Utah officer was paying off cancer bills when he was killed - Yahoo News