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STANDOFF
ENDS
2
Abbeville lawmen killed; gunman captured
December
9, 2003
By SHAVONNE
POTTS, WALLACE McBRIDE AND GREG DEAL
Index-Journal
staff writers
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| Valarie Powers, center,
daughter Tadiana Johnson, left, and Quintella Lee wait
on the sidewalk outside of Burger King in Abbeville.
Johnson’s father, Daniel Wilson, an Abbeville County
Sheriff’s Deputy, was killed Monday during a standoff.
| ABBEVILLE
— A county sheriff’s deputy and a constable with
the magistrate’s office were killed Monday in a standoff with
a gunman at a home along S.C. 72.
At midnight,
investigators were still trying to make sense of Monday’s
violence, but discovered enough to suggest the standoff was
not the act of a desperate man.
According to State Law
Enforcement Chief Robert Stewart, evidence collected at
various sites around the county point to a carefully planned
event.
Killed Monday were Deputy Dan Wilson and Constable
Donnie Ouzts, 63, a former sheriff’s deputy.
Both men
reportedly went to the home of Steven Bixby, 36, to serve a
warrant that morning.
Ouzts was shot outside the home,
officials said. Wilson’s body was later discovered inside the
home, but Stewart said it was unclear how long he had been
dead.
When the 14-hour standoff came to an end Monday
night, Bixby and his parents, Rita and Arthur Bixby, were both
in custody. Arthur Bixby was wounded when law enforcement
officials stormed the home, while Rita Bixby was arrested
following a less-dramatic standoff at Abbeville Arms, a nearby
apartment complex.
Stewart said Rita Bixby was threatening
to strafe the apartment building with gunfire if any harm came
to her son.
Discovered at their home, Stewart said, was a
collection of militia and anti-American literature, as well as
suicide notes. Monday’s violence, he said, had been
planned.
The shooting allegedly stemmed from a dispute over
roadwork taking place near the Bixby home. The S.C. Department
of Transportation reportedly planned to take about 10 feet of
land at 4 Union Church Road for an S.C. 72 road-widening
project.
A clash between Department of Transportation
workers and someone at the house last week led to police going
to the home Monday, DOT spokesman Pete Poore told The
Associated Press.
“The work was approaching that location,”
Poore said.
Agency workers were putting up stakes Thursday
showing where the state’s right of way was, he said, when
someone from the house came outside and told them to take up
the stakes.
Poore said he didn’t know what was said, but
“that was the incident that precipitated the law enforcement
visit today.”
Gene Land, who lives about a half-mile away,
told The Associated Press that Bixby had been living in the
house with his parents for more than 10 years and was upset
about the widening project.
S.C. Highway Patrol officers
said reports of an officer needing assistance came in about
9:30 a.m. When officers arrived, they found Ouzts lying near a
window outside the house.
Highway Patrol officers rushed in
to remove Ouzts.
It appeared he was shot by a rifle, state
Public Safety spokesman Sid Gaulden said.
Ouzts, whose
first great-grandchild was born three months ago, worked in
the magistrate’s office for several years, son Chris Ouzts
said.
Ouzts reportedly was wearing a bullet-proof vest. As
a volunteer state constable, Ouzts helped supplement manpower
for the county.
Negotiators struggled to communicate with
Bixby for much of the day, resorting to blunt requests through
a loudspeaker. Armed officers surrounded the house, equipped
with guns, an armored car, a remote-controlled robot that
carried video camera, and a host of other tools that remained
out of sight.
“Answer the phone!” the negotiator pleaded
over the loudspeaker. “Talk to me!”
Later, officers called
out for the suspect by name, saying, “Steven, we won’t hurt
you. Come to the front door.”
Stewart said neither of the
men inside of the home made any effort to respond to
negotiators, who repeated their requests at intervals
throughout the evening.
Residents and passersby were in
shock upon hearing about the shooting. Despite law enforcement
efforts to keep the media involved, information traveled slow
throughout the day.
Quintella Lee, a friend of Wilson’s
family, continued her shift at Burger King, located on S.C. 72
within walking distance of the shootings. Wilson’s daughter,
Tadiana Johnson, waited with her at the restaurant for any
news about her father.
Lee and her friend watched as law
enforcement passed through the barricades across the highway,
waiting silently for scraps of information.
“We’re just
trying to find out what’s going on,” said Valarie Powers,
Johnson’s mother, who also had a vigil at the restaurant.
While little was said between family members, there was
plenty of crude speculation about the standoff from the
restaurant’s diners.
Johnson spent most of the morning
crying on the curb outside of the restaurant, out of earshot
of the talk inside.
“I kept wondering why they haven’t done
anything about it,” said Land, who stood with his wife Tracy
about 200 yards from the site for most of the day.
Land
said he’s known Bixby for more than 10 years.
“I never
thought he would have shot an officer, but I knew he wasn’t
all together,” Land said.
The Lands live down the road and
went to the site when they heard ambulances race down S.C. 72.
Tracy Land said she knew Donnie Ouzts, and that he always had
a smile on his face.
Drivers were rerouted around a 3-mile
stretch near S.C. 72 and Union Church road. Roadblocks were at
both ends of the road, with dozens of law enforcement vehicles
and emergency vehicles lining both sides of the
street.
Tracy Land said she picked up her son from school
because the buses weren’t allowed on the roads.
“It’s been
a pretty traumatic day for Abbeville,” Abbeville dentist Mark
Horton said. “My heart goes out to the deputy’s family. He was
a really good guy.”
Throughout the day, snipers positioned
themselves around the house — hidden on the porch of a
neighbor’s home, in the woods near the house, on a dirt mound
across the street and elsewhere.
The standoff began about
9:30 a.m. Wilson and Ouzts reportedly arrived at the home
about 30 minutes earlier.
S.C. Highway Patrol spokesman
Steve Sluder said a dispatch call came in about an officer
needing assistance.
“When we got here, one deputy was out
front,” Sluder said. “We established a perimeter. We got the
body that was in front of the house and put him in a
car.”
Sluder was on a conference call when the report was
made.
“We felt that we had to go in and get him,” Sluder
said.
Chuck Bagwell, Abbeville EMS captain, arrived on the
scene about 9:50 a.m. and said other EMS workers were already
there. He said the body was taken to the Anderson
morgue.
At 7:15 p.m., an armored personnel carrier was sent
in to knock down a door. Power to outside lights was cut off,
and a robot was sent into the house.
An hour later,
officers used a vehicle to move a trailer near the house. A
small fire then broke out in front of the house and emergency
officials were called in to try to put it out with
extinguishers.
At 8:50 p.m., a barrage of gunfire broke out
under the cloak of darkness. Gunfire continued for several
minutes, reportedly involving hundreds of rounds, and tear gas
was deployed into the house. Shots rang out again about
9:20.
Bixby’s father, surrendered to authorities sometime
after 10 p.m.
He had been wounded by gunfire, Stewart
said.
“They fired several rounds on us, and we fired
several rounds on them,” Stewart said. Several law enforcement
officials suffered minor injuries.
The Associated
Press contributed to this story.
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