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Blake Edward Fitzgerald and his girlfriend Brittany Nicole Harper were involved in a shootout in the early hours Friday morning after leading police on a car chase.
Blake and Brittany apparently robbed a shoe store on Friday night and were spotted by witnesses, which sparked the pursuit.
The hunt came to an end after the couple drove to a residential neighborhood in Milton and had “nowhere to go.”
“There was an attempt to take them into custody without shots fired,” Escambia County Sheriff David Morgan said during a news conference Friday morning.
The couple, both 30, had a $10,000 bounty on their heads for a multi-state crime spree that may have begun over a week ago and allegedly involved taking hostages in each incident.
In their final stand, the couple reached a residential neighborhood in Milton, northeast of Pensacola, in a stolen vehicle and “had nowhere to go,” William Eddins, state attorney of the First Judicial Circuit, told reporters.
They ran out of the car and tried to get inside one of the homes. But they never made it inside, Morgan added.
“It occurred so quickly that the residents of the home were taken care of to get them out of where the firefight might have ensued,” he said.
Authorities wouldn’t say whether Fitzgerald pulled a weapon first, prompting the standoff. They also wouldn’t say whether Harper was armed or the circumstances surrounding her shooting, other than confirming she was used as a human shield.
The standoff lasted for 15 minutes, and at 12:52 a.m., Fitzgerald was dead at the scene.
Harper was taken to the hospital, and will be arrested and charged with home invasion robbery, false imprisonment and grand theft auto, Eddins said.
Escambia County police are also trying to determine whether they were involved in a robbery at a Piggly Wiggly.
Ultimately, they may have had plans to go to Panama City to get married, Morgan said.
Friday’s showdown with cops brings to an end a series of events that authorities believe started around Jan. 22 with a break-in in a Joplin, Missouri, home where guns were stolen.
Agencies/Canadajournal
