Sergeant Kevin Gale Stauffer Jr. was 38 when he was killed in the line of duty on December 23, 2013, while responding to a bank robbery at a BancorpSouth branch on South Gloster Street in Tupelo, Mississippi. Stauffer and another officer, Joseph Maher, approached the suspect’s stopped vehicle near a railroad crossing when the assailant opened fire at close range. Stauffer sustained fatal injuries and Officer Maher was critically wounded. A citizen used one of the officers’ radios to alert dispatch after the shooting.

Investigators linked the shooter to an earlier bank robbery that same day in Atlanta, Georgia. The manhunt led across state lines and culminated December 28, 2013, during a robbery attempt in Phoenix, Arizona, where a Phoenix police detective shot and fatally wounded the suspect. The FBI confirmed that the person killed in Arizona was the same individual tied to the Tupelo and Atlanta incidents. Anyone with information about Sergeant Stauffer or the December 23 events is asked to come forward.