A 'Good Samaritan' saw deputy being attacked by so he fatally shot the assailant
The Washington Post reports:
When the man saw a patrol car parked on the exit ramp of a Florida interstate, he witnessed a scene too troubling to ignore: a sheriff deputy being slammed to the ground and beaten by a man in plain clothes.
The passerby, whom the Lee County Sheriff's Office is now calling a "Good Samaritan," rushed to the two men, telling the attacker he would shoot him if he refused to stop beating the deputy.
The attacker, later identified as 53-year-old Edward Strother, continued to pin down the deputy and attack him, and the deputy struggled to keep his weapon away from him. When the attacker failed to comply to his warning, the passerby shot him three times, killing him, the News-Press reported.
The deputy, a 12-year veteran named Dean Bardes, was treated for his injuries and later released from the hospital.
Mike Scott, the Lee County sheriff, commended and thanked the man "who engaged the crazed assailant and stopped the imminent threat of great bodily harm or death to our deputy," NBC-2 reported. He did not identify the man, however.