The shooting death of two Mississippi police officers Saturday
night during a traffic stop in Hattiesburg prompted a statewide manhunt
that led to the arrests of three suspects, according to officials.
Officer Benjamin Deen had stopped a 2000 Gold Cadillac Escalade in an
industrial part of the city at around 8:30 p.m. local time Saturday,
said Warren Strain, a spokesman for the Mississippi Department of Public
Safety. Officer Liquori Tate arrived afterward to assist him, shots
were fired, and both officers were wounded.
Strain said both officers died of their injuries at a hospital. The
officers’ deaths are reportedly the first for the Hattiesburg police
force in 30 years.
Strain said law enforcement agencies across the state launched a
manhunt for the perpetrators, leading to the arrests of three suspects:
26-year-old Curtis Banks, his 29-year-old brother Marvin Banks, and
22-year-old Joanie Calloway.
Marvin Banks and Calloway have each been charged with two counts of
capital murder, and Banks' brother Curtis has been charged with two
counts of accessory after the fact of capital murder.
Strain says Marvin Banks also faces other charges. He says officers
arrested the three Hattiesburg residents at different locations
overnight without resistance following Saturday night's deadly shooting.
It wasn't immediately known if those arrested had lawyers.
The Hattiesburg American
reports that Curtis Banks was brought to the Mississippi Highway Patrol
Troop J headquarters Sunday at around 3 a.m. local time. His brother
Marvin Banks was arrested about two hours earlier.
The Jackson Clarion-Ledger
reported that as reporters were asking Curtis Banks if he had shot two
of the Hattiesburg patrolmen, he blurted out “no sir, I didn’t do it.”
"All I know right now is that there was a traffic stop and someone
started shooting at them and both of the officers were struck," Lt. Jon
Traxler, a police department spokesman, said Saturday night. He said he
didn't know how many shots were fired, or exactly by whom, adding that
was now part of the investigation.
Traxler said the state's chief law enforcement agency, the
Mississippi Bureau of Investigation, had taken up the probe of the
shooting.
Hattiesburg Mayor Johnny DuPree told the Clarion-Ledger he lamented the deaths.
"The men and women who go out every day to protect us, the men and
woman who go out every day to make sure that we're safe, they were
turned on (Saturday) night," DuPree said outside Forrest General
Hospital in Hattiesburg, where the officers were taken.
The Clarion-Ledger reports these are the first Hattiesburg officers
to die in the line of duty in 30 years. It said Tate was a recent police
academy graduate while Deen was a K-9 officer who had been honored as
the department's "Officer of the Year" in 2012.
The Associated Press contributed to this report
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