Staff report

Multiple law enforcement agencies from across Louisiana scoured Abbeville's streets late Monday, searching for two suspects in the fatal shooting of an off-duty Vermilion Parish sheriff's deputy.

Authorities believe the suspects stole the personal pick-up truck of the unidentified officer they shot and killed after 4 p.m. Monday. He was mowing grass near South Hospital and Cougar drives, south of the city, when he called the sheriff's office at 4:04 p.m. to report the suspects' activity, which he deemed suspicious.

A deputy sent to the area found the off-duty deputy shot — "more than once," a State Police spokesman said later — and the deputy later died at a local hospital. Vermilion Parish Sheriff Mike Couvillon will release the name of the victim at a press conference scheduled for Tuesday afternoon.

Shortly after the shooting, a witness reported seeing a gold Lexus that had crashed into the ditch near the scene and saw two men fleeing the South Hospital Drive area in the off-duty deputy's pickup truck. A utility trailer and lawn mower were attached.

The truck was later abandoned off Miles Street inside the Abbeville city limits, the sheriff said.

By late Monday, law enforcement has narrowed down the search to a 10-block area on the south side of Abbeville, where the victim's truck was found. A curfew was placed in effect at 9 p.m. inside the Abbeville city limits.

"It's still a very fluid situation," Hammons said, adding that officers would continue to comb the area.

Kaisha Ogwin said she has lived on South Miles her entire life in a one-story home less than a block away from where a Vermilion Parish Sheriff's Office SWAT truck was blocking off the corner of Martin Luther King Drive as part of the search perimeter.

"I've never seen anything like this before around here," said Ogwin, 24, as the search helicopter flew overhead. "There's a lot of bad crime, sure, but I've never seen this many police out here."

Authorities were reviewing what were essentially two crime scenes — where the shooting occurred and where the abandoned truck was discovered. That spread the agencies across a larger area, and the Vermilion Parish sheriff requested the help of State Police detectives in the investigation.

The agencies — including state Wildlife and Fisheries, Iberia Parish Sheriff's Office, Maurice and Abbeville police, Lafayette city marshals and state air police — would remain searching the blocked-off area until "they evaluate the scene to determine no one in the area has anything to do with the crime," Hammons explained.

The next step will be "wherever the situation takes us," Hammonds said.

The sheriff's office asked the community be on the lookout and report any suspicious activity in their neighborhoods, specifically male subjects on foot. Residents were asked to take precautions locking up their property, homes and sheds and not to attempt to confront any suspects.

The suspects are described as tall black males. One was wearing a bright green shirt with long blue shorts and white tennis shoes. The other man was wearing a white shirt.

"It's a very sad day today, as we lost a veteran brother in law enforcement, a husband, a father and a child. We are utilizing every available resource and will not rest until these dangerous criminals are apprehended and brought to justice," Couvillon said in the prepared statement.