Law enforcement officials have released little information about a police shooting yesterday in a southeast Oklahoma town, declining to provide answers to what led officers to shoot at a robbery suspect in a ute - injuring him and three of the four children inside.
Agents with the Oklahoma State Bureau of Investigation say they are still interviewing witnesses to the shooting, which occurred near a residential home in Hugo, a town of 5000 people.
Hugo police detectives had been looking for William Devaughn Smith, a 21-year-old suspect in an April 11 robbery at a local Pizza Hut. The detectives were "attempting to make contact" with Smith at a community food centre when "shots were fired," state authorities said in a news release.
Smith, a woman, and four unidentified children, were in a green ute when the shooting broke out. Smith was injured, as were three of the children. Authorities have not released the names of the injured children, but OSBI spokesperson Brook Arbeitman said they were aged 5, 3 and 1 and sustained "non-life threatening injuries."
Olivia Hill identified herself as the woman in the ute in an interview with local TV station KXII. Hill is the mother of the four children, she told the station.