Arkansas officer expected to fully recover after shooting

LONOKE, Ark. – An Arkansas police officer who was shot multiple times during a confrontation at a fast-food restaurant with a man suspected of kidnapping a 14-year-old North Carolina girl is expected to make a full recovery, authorities said.

Lonoke Police Officer Cody Carpenter “is in good spirits given the circumstances,” city officials said in a statement.

Carpenter and another officer confronted the suspect, William Robert Ice, 38, of Jackson Center, Pennsylvania, outside of a McDonald’s restaurant Saturday in Lonoke, about 27 miles (43 kilometres) east of Little Rock.

Police said Ice began shooting at the officers, striking Carpenter. The other officer returned fire and Ice drove away, but police eventually found him critically injured in his vehicle from a suspected self-inflicted gunshot wound, Arkansas State Police said. Ice later died at a Little Rock hospital.

Ice was suspected of kidnapping the girl from her North Carolina home. The Davidson County Sheriff’s Office in North Carolina said Ice took the child Feb. 11 after communicating with her online.

The girl was inside the vehicle at the time of the shootout but was not injured, police said.

Ice had been wanted on warrants of first-degree kidnapping and soliciting a child by computer, authorities said.

The other officer involved in the confrontation is on administrative leave pending an investigation, but Lonoke officials said they expect him to make “an honourable return to duty” once the inquiry is complete.