Deputies ambushed

A peace officer is dead and three people are wounded following a Monday afternoon gunfight in which an armed suspect opened fired on two Sacramento County sheriff’s deputies responding to a business disturbance in Rancho Cordova.

According to the Sheriff’s Department, which has a policing contract with the city of Rancho Cordova, the initial 911 call provided no indication that deputies were about to encounter an armed suspect. When the two patrol officers arrived on the 1000 block of Folsom Boulevard, the department states, a suspect later identified as Anton Lemon Moore, 38, of Rancho Cordova, allegedly started shooting.

Deputies Mark Stasyuk and Julie Robertson returned fire, but both were hit, the department says, as was an uninvolved bystander. The 28-year-old Robertson suffered a gunshot wound to her arm. The department didn’t say where the 27-year-old Stasyuk was hit, but his injuries were severe. Shortly after arriving at the hospital, he was pronounced dead, the department states.

Moore sustained multiple gunshot wounds, but is expected to survive, the department says. He was still hospitalized on Tuesday.

Stasyuk, who leaves behind a wife, sister and both parents, is the second sheriff’s deputy to die in the line of duty in just over a year. Deputy Robert French was killed in a shootout with a heavily armed suspect at a Ramada Inn in August of last year.

On Tuesday, Black Lives Matter planned to acknowledge the six-month anniversary of the fatal police shooting of Stephon Clark by protesting a California Peace Officers’ Association training and expo at the Sacramento Convention Center. Following media reports that Sheriff Scott Jones had called for a counter-protest of BLM, the department issued a release stating that the sheriff instead wanted community members to share their grief and support for law enforcement.