After agonizing for hours about the condition of Abbeville County sheriff’s Sgt. Danny Wilson, hostage negotiators using a robot finally learned his fate.

A video camera mounted in the robot showed the 36-year-old deputy lying in a pool of his own blood — with his hands cuffed behind his back — about 10 feet inside the home of Rita and Arthur Bixby.

His death was a bitter blow to State Law Enforcement Division Chief Robert Stewart, whose SWAT agents had tried desperately all day to win the officer’s release, hoping he was still alive.

They later would learn that Wilson likely died that morning, a short time before Constable Donnie Ouzts, 63, was shot outside the small, rural home at 4 Union Church Road, along S.C. 72 just west of downtown Abbeville.

“They never really had a chance,” Stewart said Tuesday in reconstructing the daylong standoff.

It ended nearly 13 hours later after several gunbattles between police and Steven Bixby, 36, and his 74-year-old father, Arthur Bixby, Stewart said. The 30-year law enforcement veteran described the exchanges as “the most horrific I’ve ever been involved in.”

Stewart estimated his agents fired “hundreds” of rounds during Monday night’s gunbattles and nearly ran out of ammunition. “It’s an absolute miracle that eight or 10 SLED agents were not killed,” he said.

Wilson and Ouzts were wearing bulletproof vests, he said, though Ouzts’ vest was “not effective ... with this type of weapon.”

Nine guns, most of them high-powered weapons, were seized from the home, he said.

Steven’s mother, Rita Bixby, 71, who authorities say was not in the house at the time, also faces charges.

Authorities said the Bixby family was angry with the state for taking about 20 feet of their land for a road widening.

Stewart, who coordinated the negotiations, and other authorities gave this account of the ordeal:

Wilson went to the home about 9:15 a.m. Monday. A short time later, two people in Abbeville, whom Stewart declined to identify, received phone calls that the “first officer has been shot.”

They notified police. Abbeville sheriff’s Lt. Deborah Graham arrived to check on Wilson, with Ouzts following a few minutes later.

Wilson’s squad car was idling outside the home and the deputy was nowhere in sight.

As he stepped from his car, Ouzts was shot in the back, about 25 yards from the home.

Several officers responded, and dragged Ouzts away. He died on his way to the hospital. Graham escaped unharmed.

By then, Wilson probably had been shot, Stewart said, though police didn’t know it yet. He wouldn’t say how many times he had been shot.

The SWAT team tried repeatedly to negotiate with the father and son, but they didn’t answer phone calls or respond to other measures.

Meanwhile, Rita Bixby had holed up in her son’s apartment, about a mile away. She threatened to start killing people in the apartment complex if anything happened to her husband or son, Stewart said.

A second SWAT team was able to talk her and another disabled son out of the apartment before nightfall; she refused to help negotiate with her husband and Steven.

Investigators confiscated a pistol from the apartment and a rifle from a vehicle outside the apartment.

A suicide note and a will purportedly made by Steven Bixby, along with “antigovernment material” and information about high-powered weapons, were found in his nearby apartment, Stewart said.

“This thing was planned all the way,” Stewart said.

After it became dark and negotiations had gone nowhere at the Bixby house, a SLED armored vehicle equipped with a hastily made steel battering ram broke open the front door, which allowed a police robot equipped with a video camera to go inside.

Wilson was seen lying handcuffed in a pool of blood. A short time later, officers rushed into the house and pulled him from the home as Stewart and other SLED agents battled a sudden fire in a propane grill outside the home.

Stewart said he believes the hostage takers did not open fire on officers then because they wanted them to extinguish the grill blaze.

Gunfire erupted, though, about 9 p.m. after the robot re-entered the home and showed one of the hostage takers in a bedroom. Several more gunbattles ensued.

Steven Bixby came out of the house and surrendered after a tear gas round was fired into the house. His wounded father gave up in the house about two hours later.

The Associated Press contributed to this story.