‘Armed and dangerous’ murder suspect escapes after pepper-spraying female deputy
A Louisiana murder suspect is on the run after faking a medical emergency — then pepper-spraying a female deputy and speeding away in her SUV, according to officials.
Leon Ruffin, 51, was being taken from a hospital back to jail on Sunday evening when he “created some type of disturbance,” Jefferson Parish Sheriff Joe Lopinto told a press conference.
When the deputy transporting him went to check what was happening, Ruffin doused her with pepper spray and then jumped into the driver’s seat of her Ford Explorer and took off, the sheriff said.
The armed deputy fired three shots at Ruffin, but it was not immediately known if any of the rounds struck him.
The sheriff warned that the murder suspect likely feels he has nothing to lose because he was already “in for a second-degree murder” and facing “life in prison.”
“I definitely consider him armed and dangerous,” Lopinto cautioned.
Ruffin is thought to have faked an injury to get taken to a hospital, and discarded the medical boot he’d been fitted with when he fled, Nola.com reported.
It’s not clear how the suspected killer managed to get the pepper spray, given that the deputy still had her own department-issued spray after the attack
Ruffin had been in custody since July on charges including second-degree murder, aggravated assault with a weapon and felon in possession of a firearm stemming from the shooting death of 53-year-old Gannon Johnson.
He was last seen driving away in the deputy’s marked patrol vehicle number G068, which was found abandoned in the Algiers neighborhood three hours later.
