The city of Hays, Kansas, is in mourning after Police Sgt. Scott Heimann, 32, was killed in the line of duty while responding to a domestic violence call that turned deadly over the weekend.
Just before midnight on Saturday, police were called to the 2000 block of East 21st Street, where a woman reported she had fled a violent altercation with her significant other, 34-year-old Zane Wickham. She told officers Wickham rammed his truck into her vehicle as she tried to escape before she ran to a nearby home for help.
By the early hours of Sunday morning, officers and a Kansas Highway Patrol trooper set up a perimeter near the backyard of Wickham’s residence in the 2200 block of Downing Avenue. At around 1:55 a.m., a single gunshot rang out from inside the residence.
That bullet struck Sgt. Heimann. Despite immediate aid from fellow officers and first responders, he later died at a hospital in Hutchinson. Hours later, at about 6:15 a.m., tactical teams entered the house and found Wickham dead from what is believed to be a self-inflicted gunshot wound.
