Two California sheriff's deputies were shot and wounded Tuesday after they responded to reports of an armed and agitated man pulling up plants in the garden of a rural Rastafarian church, authorities said. (AP Photo/Sophia Bollag)
Two deputies were wounded in California on Tuesday after a man opened fire on them, officials said.
The incident followed a “disturbance” in which a verbal argument ensued over the destroying of marijuana plants, Yuba County Sheriff Steve Durfor said in a Tuesday night press conference.
The deputies confronted the man as he pulled up the plants on a farm that supplies pot to a Rastafarian church, authorities said. When the deputies arrived, a gunbattle broke out, Yuba County sheriff's spokeswoman Leslie Carbagh said.
The man proceeded to barricade himself inside a home in the remote community of Oregon House, about 55 miles north of Sacramento.
It wasn’t immediately clear if the gunman died from the police gunfire or from self-inflicted shots.
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Both injured deputies, a 14-year veteran and 10-year veteran, are expected to survive. “They went up there and they did their job and they took care of business,” Durfor said. “These guys know what they’re doing.”
Neither the deputies nor the shooter were immediately identified.
The shooting occurred a day after two police officers were shot nearly 200 miles south in the central California city of Los Banos during a struggle with a man who broke into his estranged wife's apartment.
Police shot and killed that gunman.
Fox News’ Matt Richardson and The Associated Press contributed to this report.
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