JACKSON, Miss. – A Mississippi man and his 1-year-old daughter died Thursday after officials say he kidnapped her, fled from police, and then shot the girl and himself on a Mississippi Delta highway.
Holmes County Sheriff Willie March told The Associated Press that it was the third day this week that 23-year-old Lavonta Lloyd had sought to take the girl from her mother.
"It's a terrible situation," March said.
March said Lloyd first took his daughter Kamaya Lloyd from a day care on Monday, but Kamaya was returned to her mother later that evening. Then, on Tuesday, deputies were called when Lloyd resurfaced at the mother's home in the 400-person town of Cruger, about 70 miles (110 kilometers) north of Jackson. Deputies chased Lloyd down some railroad tracks but lost his trail after he escaped into a cornfield. March said deputies were called off the search because someone escaped from the county's jail.
March confirmed that the mother is Kimberly Outlaw, who filed a domestic violence petition Monday against Lloyd in Holmes County Chancery Court. A judge didn't hear the case before Lloyd's death. March said he didn't know if Lloyd knew Outlaw was pursuing charges.
On Thursday, Outlaw's mother called March early in the morning to say Lloyd was holding Outlaw at gunpoint. March said Lloyd fled Cruger before deputies arrived, but after he reportedly fired shots. No one was injured.
That set off a 30-mile (50-kilometer) chase, as deputies pursued Lloyd across three counties in the flatlands of the Mississippi Delta. Before reaching a roadblock, Lloyd's truck veered off the road and into a deep ditch near Moorhead, in Sunflower County.
March said deputies couldn't see the truck because of the ditch and the truck's tinted windows. A shield was brought to the scene to protect deputies, March said, but when they broke open the driver's side window, they found Lloyd and the girl dead.
"The baby was on top of him and had been shot," Leflore County Sheriff Ricky Banks, whose deputies also took part in the chase, told The Greenwood Commonwealth.
Police records show Lloyd was arrested twice in Jackson on domestic violence charges in 2016 and 2017, but a preliminary search of court records there turned up no convictions.
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An earlier version of this story has been corrected to correct the spelling of the man's name to Lavonta Lloyd instead of Lavonte Lloyd.
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Follow Jeff Amy on Twitter at http://twitter.com/jeffamy . Read his work at https://www.apnews.com/search/By%20Jeff%20Amy .
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