On a late Sunday evening in September 2015, Kentucky State Trooper Joseph Cameron Ponder, 31, initiated a traffic stop on Interstate 24 in Lyon County after stopping a vehicle driven by 25-year-old Joseph Thomas Johnson-Shanks of Missouri for speeding. Johnson-Shanks had an 18-year-old niece, Ambrea R.J. Shanks, another woman, and two young children in the car. Trooper Ponder discovered Johnson-Shanks was driving on a suspended license and was reportedly trying to arrange a hotel for the family.

For reasons that remain unclear Johnson-Shanks fled, prompting a high-speed pursuit that ended when his vehicle stopped and Ponder’s cruiser struck the rear of it. Johnson-Shanks then fired multiple rounds into the trooper’s car, striking the hood, windshield, and Trooper Ponder several times. Ponder was taken to a nearby hospital and died shortly before midnight on September 13, 2015. Johnson-Shanks escaped on foot and was located hours later in a rural, wooded area; when he refused to drop his weapon and aimed it at officers a trooper fired and Johnson-Shanks later died at a hospital.

Authorities arrested Ambrea R.J. Shanks and charged her with first-degree hindering prosecution or apprehension; the other woman and the two children were questioned but not charged. Reports state Johnson-Shanks was a convicted felon and prohibited from possessing a firearm at the time of the shooting. Does anyone have information about the pursuit, the stop, or the people in the vehicle that could help clarify what happened that night?