Police don’t know why men who fatally shot 2 officers then died in shootout were in Arkansas

By Chuck Bartels, AP
Friday, May 21, 2010

Little known about 2 men killed by police in Ark.

WEST MEMPHIS, Ark. — Investigators were working Friday to find out more about the two men who were killed in a shootout with police after they allegedly gunned down two officers who had stopped them on an Arkansas interstate.

Police have revealed no information about the two men, including their names, and said they were still trying to figure out what the pair was doing in the area when their minivan was pulled over Thursday.

“We’ve got to find out: Why they were here? Where did they come from? Who had they talked to in the Memphis area?” state police spokesman Bill Sadler said Friday. “Did they set out to target the officers?”

Police say Sgt. Brandon Paudert, 39, and Officer Bill Evans, 38, were killed after Evans pulled over a white minivan with Ohio license plates while “running drug interdiction” on Interstate 40 in east Arkansas. Two men got out of the van with AK-46s and opened fire on the officers, authorities say.

“In what was probably only a few minutes, Officer Evans was shoved to the ground and the men in the minivan started shooting at both officers,” Assistant Police Chief Mike Allen said.

Although officers were assigned to a drug unit, it wasn’t known Friday whether it was a drug-related stop.

“The only people who know what happened in the original traffic stop are dead,” Sadler said.

The suspects were spotted about 90 minutes later in the parking lot of a nearby Walmart, officials said.

Dozens of officers swarmed the vehicle after a wildlife officer rammed the minivan with his car, and both suspects were shot and killed, authorities said.

During that shootout, Crittenden County Sheriff Dick Busby was shot in the arm and his chief deputy, W.A. Wren, was shot in the abdomen, authorities said. Both were in serious condition Friday, a spokeswoman at the Regional Medical Center in Memphis said.

Sadler said authorities don’t believe others were involved in the shooting of Evans and Paudert.

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