A Carroll County Sheriff’s deputy was killed Friday after a man shot at two deputies who were conducting a welfare check at a home in Hillsville, Virginia, the Carroll County Sheriff’s Office said. The second deputy survived after his ballistic vest stopped a round.
The sheriff’s office said law enforcement received a request from a family member to check on a resident at the home. When deputies arrived, a man at the residence began shooting. Both deputies returned fire, the office said in a statement.
“One deputy sustained fatal injuries and was pronounced deceased. The second deputy was struck in his ballistic vest and is currently receiving medical evaluation and is reported to be in stable condition,” the sheriff’s office said.
Sheriff Kevin A. Kemp identified the deceased officer as Deputy Logan Utt. Kemp said Utt was a military veteran who joined the Carroll County Sheriff’s Office in 2023.
A search was underway for the suspect, identified in law enforcement communications as Michael Timothy Puckett. Authorities described him as armed and dangerous. The FBI was assisting in the manhunt, according to multiple reports.
The shooting in Hillsville, a small city in southwestern Virginia near the North Carolina border, added to a string of line-of-duty law enforcement deaths across the country in recent months. In April, a sheriff’s deputy was shot and killed in central California while serving an eviction notice. In February, two Missouri deputies were fatally shot in an hourslong gunbattle.
Carroll County is a rural county in Virginia’s Blue Ridge Mountains with a population of roughly 37,000. Hillsville, the county seat, is a community where law enforcement officers routinely respond to calls in remote, sparsely populated areas.
The conditions of the shooting — deputies dispatched on a welfare check, a call type considered among the most routine in policing — drew attention to the risks officers face during calls that begin as community welfare interactions. The FBI tracks law enforcement line-of-duty deaths annually; welfare checks and domestic disturbance calls have consistently been among the most dangerous call types for officers nationwide.
Authorities continued to search for Puckett as of Friday evening. The sheriff’s office did not immediately release additional details about the circumstances of the welfare check or the exchange of gunfire.