Officers trying to serve a domestic violence order were ambushed Thursday night in Allen, Kentucky. Authorities are describing the hostage barricade situation as a “war zone.” Lance Storz was waiting for them. The shooting, explains Sheriff John Hunt, was “planned.” Police “encountered pure hell when they arrived. They had no chance.”
Officers ambushed by terrorist
These officers were clearly bushwhacked by a domestic terrorist. Police Tribune provided the basic details then one outlet after another started filling in the gaps. At least one officer and one K-9 are confirmed dead. Unconfirmed reports of a second officer are being explored, and may turn out to be a duplicate report on the canine.
Another officer is fighting for his life in the hospital. Five others are reported wounded, so far, including the emergency management director. They’re all in various local hospitals.
The standoff began around 5:00 p.m. on Thursday night, June 30, at a single family residence situated along Railroad Street in Allen. That’s when the 49-year-old suspect opened fire on police. He had “barricaded himself in the house, taking his wife and daughter hostage in the process.”
As detailed by Sheriff Hunt, “multiple law enforcement officers from different agencies were shot during the gunfight that ensued.” Agents from the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives came in to back up the Kentucky State Police. By 10:00 p.m. they had Lance Storz in chains. Neither of the hostages involved was injured in the shootout.
After the ordeal was over, a news conference was held and the sheriff tried to piece it all together for the press. Sheriff Hunt confirmed officers were “trying to serve an emergency protection order in a domestic situation.” As soon as they arrived, Storz opened fire, then barricaded himself inside. “When the deputies put out the call for help, the responding agencies, I guess, just entered the line of fire without even knowing where it was coming from. We were there for hours before we even knew where it was coming from.”
Floyd County Attorney Keith Bartley added that the “suspect used multiple weapons.” To Bartley, “there is no question this was a mass shooting.” When he pulled up, what he saw astounded him, “you are talking about people in fatigues, people with body armor, people with night vision, people with assault weapons. If that’s not a war zone, I don’t know what is.” When he got there, it was “raining bullets.” He also says “he could tell from the sounds of the shots that the shooter had more than one gun, including what sounded like high-velocity firearms.”
Raped and sodomized
The twisted tale begins a while before that and Mrs. Storz was apparently already “injured.” It started when police got a report on Thursday that Storz had assaulted a woman, held her against her will, raped and sodomized her. He refused to let her leave “when she told him she had found an apartment.” She wanted “an emergency protection order.” Officers from Hunt’s department headed off to serve it.
During the shootout, one officer was forced to shelter under his cruiser. The same one the K-9, Drago, was in the back seat of when killed. The problem was the vehicle was still running and the officer was near fatally exposed to carbon monoxide fumes for most of the duration of the battle. “There’s a special place in hell for people like this. And if there ain’t, there ought to be,” notes Bartley. The officer was placed on life support and is listed in “grave” condition.
Stolz even shot at the ambulance when it arrived. Over the course of the evening, officers tried to negotiate. They even had family members get involved.
This is the suspect in the deadly shooting of a police officer in Floyd Co. last night. 49-year-old Lance Storz is facing charges of murder and murder of a police officer. @LEX18News pic.twitter.com/n9iAlugBjD
— Evelyn Schultz (@EvelynSchultzTV) July 1, 2022
They finally got him to surrender and he walked out. The woman and child were taken to a nearby shelter. “This guy had a plan, and he pretty much executed that plan almost to precision,” Sheriff Hunt said.
Storz was booked by irate and tired officers into the Pike County Detention Center shortly after 4:30 a.m. on Friday on two counts of murder of a police officer, one count of murder, and one count of first-degree assault on a police animal. A judge set his bond at $10 million. As listed on his LinkedIn page, he has ties to Oregon where he ran what’s believed to be a trucking company named “underworld.”
He has previous addresses in Florida, Washington state, and Oregon. One of his older criminal cases from Volusia County, Florida involves “trying to take out a migrating bird with a shotgun.” He has prior assault complaints and domestic violence charges as well as a string of bankruptcies. His most recent shows he owes a little more than $400,000. His assets are listed as “A Chevy Astro van and fishing poles.“
