By DON FLETCHER
News Staff Writer
Alabama Law Enforcement Agency officials have still not released the identity of a suspect who was killed in an April 9 shootout with a state trooper at the end of a high-speed chase that carried into northern Escambia County.
The trooper, Cpl. Jeremy Alford, was reportedly hit by two bullets but managed to fatally shoot the driver of a vehicle that refused to stop when the state patrolman tried to pull him over for an unspecified traffic violation along Interstate 65 in Conecuh County. The chase carried along Alabama 41 and into northern Escambia County before it ended on Emmons Road, about eight miles north of Brewton.
Alford was also able to take the vehicle’s two passengers — Jana Arnold, 32, of Sylvester, Ga. and Johndarious Chrishon Williams, 21, of Rebecca, Ga. — into custody before reinforcements arrived and the wounded trooper was taken to a regional hospital for treatment.
He remained in the unnamed medical facility until April 12, when ALEA officials announced that Alford “has been released from the hospital and is currently at home resting with family.”
Arnold and Williams were also taken to a hospital, at which they were treated for their injuries and released. Both were then booked into the Escambia County Detention Center on fugitive warrants from Georgia, and both remained in the facility without bond late Monday, April 17. The criminal charge or charges for which they were wanted has not been disclosed.
In the immediate wake of the shootout, ALEA Secretary Hall Taylor issued a statement in which he praised Alford for acting with “true courage and heroism over the course of the incident.”
Taylor also called the veteran lawman “a true professional and public servant, dedicated to keeping the citizens of his local community and the State of Alabama safe.”
ALEA’s State Bureau of Investigation (SBI) is conducting the investigation into the shooting, and no other information has been made public. Once the SBI probe is complete, the findings will be turned over to the Escambia County District Attorney’s Office, an ALEA spokesman said.