Tennessee Murder Suspect Shot, Killed After Stabbing West Texas Deputy
GAINES COUNTY, Texas (CBSDFW.COM/AP) — Police say a Connecticut man accused in the fatal stabbing of a Nashville, Tennessee man and the wounding of his wife has been fatally shot in West Texas after stabbing a deputy there.
The Metropolitan Nashville Police tweeted Monday that 34-year-old Peter Alexander Bohning of Kent, Connecticut, was shot and killed during an altercation with law enforcement in Gaines County, Texas.
The agency says a Gaines County deputy was stabbed and taken to an El Paso hospital.
According to the Texas Highway Patrol, a Gaines County deputy came across Bohning while responding to a call of a suspicious person and vehicle early Monday in Seminole, a city of about 7,500 people near the rural Texas-New Mexico border.
When the deputy asked him for identification, Bohning stabbed the deputy, Texas Highway Patrol Sgt. Oscar Villarreal said in a news release. The deputy then shot the 34-year-old Bohning, who was pronounced dead at a hospital in Seminole. The deputy was flown to a Lubbock hospital, where he was in stable condition Monday afternoon, Villarreal said.
Bohning was driving a gray Toyota Camry at the time. That car matches the description of a car Metro Nashville Police believed Bohning had fled in after a stabbing in that Tennessee city.
The car belonged to Leigh Ann and Donald Zirkle, who had been sitting on their back porch around 3:30 p.m. Friday when a stranger approached and asked for directions before attacking them, according to police. Leigh Ann Zirkle ran through the house and out the front door before collapsing in the street, where neighbors saw her and rendered aid, a police statement said.
Officers then found Donald Zirkle critically wounded at the rear of the house, it said. The man was taken to Vanderbilt University Medical Center, where he died.
A silver Subaru sedan with Connecticut license plates was parked in the street at the side of the Zirkles' house with its rear doors open. The car was registered to Bohning.
The attack on the couple triggered an immediate manhunt for the suspect.
On Sunday, Bohning's mother, Sue Ellen Bohning, told The News-Times in Danbury, Connecticut that her son had mental problems and had left home about a week earlier. She told the newspaper that murder "doesn't sound like him."
(© Copyright 2019 CBS Broadcasting Inc. All Rights Reserved. The Associated Press contributed to this report.)
