JACKSON, Miss. (AP) – The mother of a man who shot four Mississippi law enforcement officers and was killed in a shootout says authorities refused to let her talk to her son during nearly six hours of negotiations.
Katherine Hudson said she thinks family members could have convinced Charles Lee Lambert, 45, to end the standoff without bloodshed.
Lambert had holed up in a house near Iuka in northern Mississippi. Authorities stormed the house early Saturday and Lambert began shooting. James Lee Tartt, 44, an agent in the Mississippi Bureau of Narcotics, was killed and three other officers were wounded in the shootout that followed.
A preliminary autopsy report indicates that Tartt was hit in the left shoulder by a single bullet from an assault rifle, Tishomingo County Coroner Mack Wilemon said Sunday night.
Lambert also was killed; his autopsy had not yet been performed.