TWO OFFICERS, SUSPECT KILLED IN SHOOTOUT; AUTHORITIES WITHHOLDING DETAILS

EDEN, Idaho (Associated Press) -- Two sheriff's deputies and a suspect were
killed in a gun battle after the officers tried to serve a warrant to
search a house for drugs.

Jerome County Sheriff Jim Weaver on Thursday said both Cpl. James Moulson,
30, and Cpl. Phillip Anderson, 23, were wearing bulletproof vests when they
were shot to death Wednesday night along with the suspect, George Timothy
Williams, 47.

No one else was wounded.

The gun fight occurred at the house neighbors said Williams began building
three years ago on a residential street less than a block from the senior
citizens center in Eden, a town of 300 about 10 miles east of Twin Falls.
He was living in the house while finishing it.

William Pendleton, who lives across the street, was watching the Orange
Bowl on television when the shooting began.

"I heard a series of rounds, five or six," he said. "I sprung to the door.
There was an officer behind a van and three or four backing away from the
front door."

Weaver said other officers were backing up Moulson, a four-year department
veteran and married father of a 9-month-old son, Derrick, and Anderson, who
was single and had been a deputy for two years.

County Prosecutor John Nicholson declined to provide any additional
information on the shootout. The Idaho State Police was leading the
investigation.

A State Police investigator said only a small amount of marijuana was
involved, and Chris Chugg, whose said her husband, Curtis, was Williams'
best friend, said that while Williams smoked marijuana occasionally, he was
not a drug abuser nor a violent person.

But Chugg said Williams had recently purchased a gun after befriending a
local woman who had been a victim of domestic abuse because he was
concerned about retaliation from her husband.

"I think that's got to be in the middle of all this," Chugg said. "They
portrayed him as a drug-crazed man who opened fire, and Tim wasn't this man."

"I don't know the whole story, but I know we don't have it," she said.

The deaths of the deputies brought to 55 the number of Idaho law
enforcement officers killed in the line of duty.

In a statement, Gov. Dirk Kempthorne called the shooting a tragedy "that
reminds us once again how the men and women who serve in law enforcement
put their lives on the line on behalf of all of us every day to maintain
law and order."

The Rev. Robert Gomes, the sheriff's chaplain, said a grief support team
was working with the department's officers and their families.

"We pull together because we're a family. We're a brotherhood," he said. "I
expect every police officer within 500 miles will probably come to the
funeral."

No details of those arrangements were available on Thursday.

Wednesday's deaths were the first killings of on-duty law enforcement
officers in Idaho since Idaho State Police trooper Linda Huff, 33, died on
June 17, 1998, in a shootout in her agency's Coeur d'Alene parking lot.

Two other Jerome County deputies were slightly wounded in a September 1999
gunfight while responding to a domestic dispute.

Deputy Lorraine Hamrick, whose husband was one of those wounded deputies,
said the department is like a big family.

Moulson and Anderson, she said, "were at my house all the time. They had
access codes to get into the house if they wanted. Phil stored his deer in
our freezer, and I took care of the baby, Derrick. Everybody in this
department is shaken up by this."