Mississippi officials: Woman and officer shot each other

BAY ST. LOUIS, Miss. — A Mississippi police officer shot and killed a woman even as the woman was fatally shooting the officer and his partner in the parking lot of a Gulf Coast motel on Wednesday, authorities now say.

Mississippi Public Safety Commissioner Sean Tindell said in a statement and interviews that body camera footage, autopsies and other forensic tests have helped to clarify what happened during the encounter.

Tindell said Amy Anderson, a 43-year-old Ocean Springs veterinarian, had checked into a motel in Bay St. Louis before dawn on Wednesday with her 8-year-old daughter and then asked the motel manager to call police.

“She thought someone was following her,” Tindell told the Sun Herald of Biloxi. “It appears she had a mental break.”

Bay St. Louis officers Branden Estorffe, 23, and Sgt. Steven Robin, 34, arrived and spent 40 minutes talking to Anderson, who officials say told officers that she believed someone was following her in a white pickup truck and was threatening her life.

After the officers decided to call state Child Protection Services, Anderson and the daughter began loading Anderson’s brown Toyota Highlander to leave the motel. Tindell said body camera footage shows that Robin was still interacting with Anderson when she shot Robin once in the head from the driver’s seat of the SUV at 4:19 a.m.

Estorffe approached, exchanging shots with Anderson that ultimately killed both the second officer and the woman. Anderson died from a gunshot wound to the chest. Tindell said an autopsy and other forensic testing showed the round that killed her came from Estorffe’s gun. That contradicts the initial statement from state investigators on Wednesday that they believed Anderson had shot and killed herself.

Robin died in the parking lot. Estorffe, died a short time later at a hospital.

The girl wasn’t injured in the shooting.

The two officers will be buried in a joint funeral on Wednesday in Bay St. Louis, even as tributes to their service continue. Hundreds of people gathered for a candlelight vigil Thursday at a high school in Bay St. Louis, a city of 10,000 people about 25 miles (40 kilometers) west of Biloxi. They included Robin’s wife, Estorffe’s father and sister, and other relatives.

“They loved coming to work and being officers, putting on the uniform and going out there every day to serve,” Bay St. Louis Police Chief Toby Schwartz said earlier in the day. “Branden and Steven were trusted colleagues and…