News of the shooting has rocked the Tampa Bay area law enforcement community with many local agencies posting on the Okaloosa County Sheriff’s Office Facebook page.

Joel Dixson Smith shot Okaloosa County Deputy Bill Myers, 64, several times in the back of the head and back after being served with an injunction related to a charge of domestic violence.

The order being served by Myers had barred Smith from possessing firearms, and Myers was walking to Smith’s vehicle to get retrieve some weapons when Smith pulled out a concealed gun and began shooting, The Associated Press reported.

The suspect fled to Niceville, where police located him at a Comfort Inns & Suites on John Sims Parkway. Once there, he barricaded himself inside a room he had rented earlier, and a siege. The hotel was evacuated, and after about 90 minutes of negotiations with deputies, the OCSO Special Response Team tear-gassed the room.

The owner of an awning store near where a deputy was killed says he initially thought there had been a robbery at a nearby Dollar General after hearing seven or eight gunshots. According to Ashley, Myers had been working to save money to take his granddaugher to Disney World.

Dixon had been arrested in 2008 for domestic battery, Ashley said, but had no other details.

“He was a sick little coward”, Ashley said.

“Deputy Myers has been a treasured part of this agency’s family since 1989”, Ashley said in the press release.

Myers is the fourth OCSO deputy who has been killed since 2008.

Wray said he was stooped over Myers when a nicely dressed man walked out of the law office. That’s when another woman screamed that the man was the shooter.

“It was like I was in a movie”, Wray said.

Her boss took pictures with his cellphone and followed the gunman in his auto, Allen said.

At the scene of the shooting, Wray said he and another man tried to talk to the deputy, but he didn’t reply. “He was bleeding profusely”. All of the guests were woken up to be escorted safely from the building, including an Arizona man named David Bump.

He told a news conference that Fuller was seen trying to open doors of cars and homes and was heard by one witness yelling, “I have a gun”.

Bump said officers took him and other guests across the street, where they spent hours watching the standoff.