Louisiana authorities launched a massive manhunt Saturday for an arrestee who killed a police officer as he was being ferried to jail.
Fox8Live said New Orleans police officer Daryle Holloway, 45, died around 8 a.m. after the suspect he was transporting grabbed a gun and shot him.
Police said Holloway was driving Travis Boys, 32, to the Orleans Parish Prison after Boys had been arrested for aggravated battery and outstanding warrants.
Police Chief Michael Harrison said Boys was handcuffed with his hands behind his back in the back seat of the police cruiser. Somehow, Boys moved his hands from behind his back to the front and obtain a weapon as well, Harrison said separately in a video interview posted on the department’s Facebook page.
He then made his way through an opening in the cage that separates the front and back seats of the police car, and shot the officer. Department spokesman Tyler Gamble said police were trying to determine what weapon Boys used and how he obtained it, but do not believe Boys used the officer’s gun
The police vehicle then crashed into a utility pole and Boys fled, the chief said.
Emergency medical teams arrived at the scene and found Holloway in the front seat with a gunshot wound. He was taken to a hospital where he died a short time later.
The manhunt involved the New Orleans Police Department, Louisiana State Police, the St. Tammany Sheriff’s Office and the U.S. Marshals Service.
Fox8 said Boys may have hopped into a black pickup truck as he got away.
“He will be caught and he will be brought to justice for the murder of Officer Holloway and for this assault on our entire community,” Harrison said in a statement.
Holloway had been a cop for 22 years and was the father of three children.
Harrison told reporters he had spoke to Holloway’s family.
“It’s the absolute hardest thing I’ve ever had to do in my life,” Harrision said. “He will pay for what he did…for killing our brother.”
Mayor Mitch Landrieu decried the killing as “the lowest of the low.”
“Killing an officer in the line of duty is an attack on our community that will not stand,” Landrieu said in a statement. “The heart and soul of New Orleans is heavy today as our community mourns one of our city’s finest.”
