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    Saturday, May 04, 2024

    UPDATED: Virginia officer fatally shot day after swearing-in

    Police remain on the scene late Saturday, Feb. 27, 2016, on Lashmere Court in Dale City, Va., where three Prince William County police officers were shot responding to a domestic violence call. Police said Officer Ashley Guindon died in the shooting. (AP Photo/Matthew Barakat)

    WOODBRIDGE, Va. (AP) — A police officer was fatally shot a day after being sworn in, and two of her colleagues were wounded while responding to a reported argument at a northern Virginia home, authorities said.

    A county official said a civilian woman was also killed in the domestic dispute Saturday.

    The Virginia man facing murder charges in the shooting deaths of a police officer and another person has been identified as an Army staff sergeant assigned to the Pentagon.

    Ronald Hamilton is being held without bond in the Prince William County Adult Detention Center on charges that include murder of a law enforcement officer. He is accused of shooting and killing Officer Ashley Guindon after she answered a domestic violence call at the Hamilton home Saturday evening. Two other officers are undergoing treatment at a hospital.

    Cindy Your, a Defense Information Systems Agency spokeswoman based at Fort Meade, Maryland, said Hamilton is an active duty Army staff sergeant assigned to the Joint Staff Support Center at the Pentagon.

    Hamilton faces arraignment on Monday.

    Officers received a call around 5:30 Saturday evening in Woodbridge, about 30 miles southwest of the nation's capital, about a "verbal argument," Sgt. Jonathan Perok, spokesman of the Prince William County Police Department, said. It's not clear how the altercation between the suspect and police began.

    The department announced on its Facebook page that Officer Ashley Guindon had died from the injuries she sustained in the shooting.

    A picture of Guindon was posted to the department's Twitter page on Friday with a tweet that read, "Welcome Officers Steven Kendall & Ashley Guindon who were sworn in today & begin their shifts this weekend. Be Safe!" It is not known if the other officer in the tweet was involved in the shooting incident.

    Guindon had been a county police officer a few years ago and had left and returned to the force, Corey Stewart, chairman of the Prince William County Board of Supervisors, said in a phone interview with The Associated Press on Saturday night. He said he did not know the exact dates of when she started and left.

    Another woman was killed in the domestic call and was dead before police arrived, Stewart said, but police declined to confirm that information. Stewart also said there was a child in the house during the incident who was not harmed.

    Prince William County Commonwealth Attorney Paul Ebert told The AP Saturday night that he has authorized a capital murder charge, along with other counts, against the suspect.

    At Inova Fairfax Hospital, where the three officers were flown by helicopter after the shooting, more than 100 patrol cars lined the roads outside early Sunday morning to stand vigil and escort Guindon's body to the medical examiner.

    The shooting occurred in the Lake Ridge neighborhood, on a curving street with $500,000 suburban houses with brick and siding exteriors, manicured lawns and two-car garages about a five-minute drive from the county office building.

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