2011-01-25 09:11

PORT ORCHARD, Washington - Detectives are investigating why a man ran from deputies and then opened fire in a Walmart parking lot in Washington state, sparking a shootout that killed him and a young woman. Two sheriff's deputies were shot but are expected to survive.

The officers were responding to a call Sunday about a suspicious person at the store in Port Orchard, which is near Seattle. Two deputies found the man and tried to talk to him but he began running, and they gave chase.

"For reasons not yet known, the suspect turned and fired multiple shots," Kitsap County sheriff's spokesman Scott Wilson said.

Both officers were hit and unable to return fire, but a female officer arriving on the scene shot and killed the gunman, Wilson said.

It's not yet clear who shot the woman, believed to be in her late teens, who died later at a Tacoma hospital. Ballistics tests on the bullets could show whether it was the deputy or the suspect, the state patrol said.

"We believe that she and the deceased gunman knew each other, that they were together," Wilson told The Associated Press. He said investigators don't know yet the relationship between the two.

Autopsies were scheduled Monday for the two people killed. Their names?- as well as the names of the three deputies?- haven't been released.

A blue minivan that apparently belonged to the suspect has been impounded and will be searched for possible evidence, said Washington State Patrol Trooper Krista Hedstrom. The van has out-of-state plates, but Hedstrom didn't know what state.