At a press conference this morning, a tearful Sheriff Gerald Hege said a search of the suspect’s home, where the deputy was shot, turned up bomb-making paraphernalia, automatic weapons and survivalist magazines.

Authorities say Christopher Cooper, 22, of Beachwood Drive, north of Lexington, was wanted for questioning in a statutory rape investigation. He shot Deputy Todd Cook, 30, at least five times when Cook went to Cooper’s home at about 1 p.m to transport him to the courthouse because of a second-degree trespassing warrant issued by the Lexington Police.

Cook, a three-year veteran of the department, was pronounced dead at Lexington Memorial Hospital. He left behind his fiancee and their daughter, who suffers from Down syndrome.

Hege said Cooper shot Cook at least once in the front, then at least three more times in the back. “Once he was down, he was shot several more times,” Hege said this morning. Hege speculated that Cook was either distracted or ambushed because he never drew his gun. Bullets from two guns, a 7.62-mm assault rifle and a 12-gauge shotgun, injured Cook, Hege said.

Cooper’s stepbrother, 16-year-old Paul Cook, was in the basement of the house at the time of the shooting, Hege said. The 16-year-old drove to an off-duty police officer’s home after the shooting to report it. By the time the boy and the officer arrived back at the scene, Cooper had left and other officers had arrived, having been alerted by a neighbor’s 911 call around 1:34.

Around 2 p.m., an informant reported that Cooper was leaving the Southmont area in a 1986 yellow Mustang with a primer trunk and tinted windows. Deputies and officers with the Department of Motor Vehicle began chasing Cooper, whose car exceeded 100 mph. The N.C. State Highway Patrol used their helicopter to locate the car.

To stop the suspect, deputies aligned two patrol cars in a “V” shape road block on an unpopulated stretch of Linwood-Southmont Road, between Jersey Church and Rockcrusher roads.

After plowing through the two cars, Cooper’s Mustang stopped in a ditch.

The officers heard a shot, and two officers returned fire, Hege said.

When officers approached the Mustang, they saw that Cooper had put “some type of assault rifle, similar to an M-16,” in his mouth and committed suicide, Hege said.

Law enforcement officers blocked off that section of Linwood-Southmont Road for more than an hour Thursday afternoon as investigators processed the suicide scene. In the piercing wind and frigid temperatures, a grim Hege retold the events to reporters.

The State Bureau of Investigations Shoot Team is now in charge of the investigation “because shots were fired,” Hege said.

Capt. Mark Stabler, of the N.C. Department of Motor Vehicles, said one of his officers returned fire. “Our interest in this is our officers responded to the call … One of our cars was second in the chase,” Stabler said.

The shooting suspect’s home is in a small development of “upper middle class houses” on Highway 29-70 about a mile from the city limits and near Davidson County Community College.

As part of that case, sources said, Lexington Police also wanted to question Cooper about the woman’s allegations that during the trespass on Saturday he had sexually assaulted her daughter.

“No one would come to the door, so he (Cook) went back to his vehicle and called the Police Department,” Hege said. A Lexington Police Department officer called the residence to make sure Cooper was home.

The officer told Deputy Cook that someone was home, so “the officer went back to the house, where he was shot,” Hege said.

“It’s a senseless shooting,” he said. He said second-degree trespassing charges “don’t even usually carry a bond.”

It was the first fatal shooting of a deputy in at least 30 years, he said.

Court records show 17 prior incidents involving Cooper, dating back to 1994. Most were for traffic violations, such as driving without a license, failure to wear a seatbelt and having an expired registration.

The most serious arrest was in 1994; Cooper was convicted of misdemeanor larceny by an employee and was sentenced to probation.

“We were familiar with him,” Hege said of Cooper.

This is the first time a deputy has died in the line of duty under Hege’s administration. “He was a fine officer, very athletic, very nice looking,” he said of Cook.

“All officers involved, all did a great job,” in handling the pursuit, Hege said. The roadblock was established and Hege gave the command to “take him out,” which he meant “to get him off the road, not necessarily shoot him.”

“It was done in a remote area…it was a perfect opportunity for us to take him off the road” to avoid involving innocent bystanders.

“When we got him stopped, he had four banana clips with almost 150 rounds of ammunition. That’s a lot,” he said. “It went as good as it probably could have.”

Cook played on the Sheriff’s Department basketball team and was a “very Christian boy,” Hege said.

“It’s sad. He has a small child with Down syndrome,” Hege said of Cook’s death. “You know, for $24,000, I don’t know how we ever get guys to work.”