2 Brothers Held in Fatal Shooting of 2 Miss. Cops

Two police officers were shot and killed last night during a routine traffic stop in Hattiesburg, Miss., and two brothers were arrested early today after a manhunt, reports the Jackson Clarion-Ledger. "All I know right now is that there was a traffic stop and someone started shooting at them and both of the officers were struck," a Hattiesburg police rep tells the AP. Officers Benjamin Deen, 34, and Liquori Tate, 25, died of their injuries at the hospital. A passerby who found them and called 911 says one was "rolling on the ground"; when her friend went to check on him, "he wasn't all the way alert but he asked her, 'Am I dying? I know I'm dying. Just hand me my walkie-talkie.'"

Residents in the immediate area were asked to "take shelter" while police searched for the shooters. Curtis Banks, 26, and his brother, Marvin Banks, 29, were later taken into custody; the Clarion-Ledger notes that both have felony convictions, as well as multiple weapons charges to their names. "No sir, I didn't do it," Curtis Banks said as he was taken into police headquarters. A third person, an unidentified woman, has been detained, notes the AP. Deen was Hattiesburg's Officer of the Year in 2012 and a K-9 officer; Tate was a recent police academy graduate. Their deaths are the city's first in the line of duty in three decades. (More Hattiesburg stories.)