A man accused of shooting a police officer early this morning in the eastern Iowa town of Maquoketa is dead. The suspect, 30-year-old Aaron Edward Scott of Wyoming (Iowa), was found dead in his rolled-over pickup in Clinton County around 3:30 a.m.
Maquoketa Police Chief Brad Koranda says a sergeant with his department exchanged gunfire with Scott shortly before 3 a.m. The sergeant’s name has not been released. “He’s doing fine,” Koranda said of the sergeant. “He was released from the hospital. He was shot in the left forearm.”
The sergeant was shot in the arm shortly after stepping out of his vehicle. “He was checking out a vehicle that was parked in the wrong direction…and it was kind of a gun fight that started pretty much immediately,” Koranda said. Scott, armed with a rifle, fled the scene after the shooting.
Other officers chased his pickup, but lost the vehicle in the area of Elwood in Clinton County. The pickup was then discovered, rolled on its top, by an Iowa State Patrol trooper and a Clinton County Sheriff’s deputy. It’s unclear if Scott was hit by gunfire and if so, if those injuries contributed to the crash.
“We don’t what caused the accident, if it was something he did or anything…we don’t know,” Koranda said.
Koranda says they may never know why Scott fired at the officer. An autopsy for Scott has been scheduled for Wednesday at the State Medical Examiner’s office in Ankeny. Scott’s prior criminal history involved two drunken driving arrests.
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