I awoke in the early hours of the morning on 10/27/06 to a phone call from a close friend telling me a fellow deputy had been shot in the line of duty.  When I arrived at work and got ready for normal patrol duty I was told that Deputy Mitchell had been shot and killed.

My prayers and thoughts go out to his wife and son.  

This was taken from the press release on my agency's website, sacsheriff.com

At  3:27 a.m. this morning (Friday, 10/27/06), a Sacramento Sheriff’s Deputy assigned to the South Bureau conducted a vehicle stop at Meiss and Dillard Roads on a white Chevrolet van with one occupant.

Approximately seven minutes later, the Sheriff’s Communications Center conducted a welfare check on the officer, without a response units responded to his location.

The initial responding unit arrived at the location approximately 20 minutes later and found the Deputy with a gunshot wound to his head. At that point, officers requested emergency medical aid for the Deputy and initiated a large perimeter to begin conducting a search of the area.  The Deputy was transported to the UC Davis Medical Center, where he was pronounced deceased at 4:45 a.m. as a result of his injuries.

Currently, an ongoing extensive search of the surrounding area and the southern part of Sacramento County is being conducted by multiple agencies including the California Highway Patrol, Sacramento Police, Elk Grove Police, Folsom Police, Rancho Cordova Police, Amador County Sheriff’s Office and numerous other law enforcement agencies.