2 OFFICERS SHOT; SUSPECT DEAD; METH LAB BUST LEADS TO GUNFIRE AT CAPE MOTEL

A shootout inside a Cape Girardeau motel Saturday ended with a suspected drug manufacturer killed and two police officers wounded and in serious condition.

Officer Bradley Moore was shot in the left arm and officer Keith May in the abdomen after the two followed up on a tip from the SEMO Drug Task Force that methamphetamine was being produced in a room at the Super 8 Motel on Kingshighway near the Interstate 55 junction.

The two were in serious condition at Southeast Missouri Hospital late Saturday.

Lt. Carl Kinnison, police department spokesman, said the officers knocked on the door of room 120 on the first floor around 8:30 p.m. but didn't announce themselves as police. An unidentified man opened the door.

"After that point, it gets a little fuzzy," Kinnison said.

But according to a woman who was in the room at the time, Kinnison said, the man went for his 9mm handgun and fired. Both officers returned fire.

Members of the Missouri State Highway Patrol were on the scene within minutes and discovered May and Moore injured. The male hotel guest was killed and the woman taken away in handcuffs.

Kinnison declined to identify the dead man or the woman pending notification of family members. He also wouldn't say if a meth lab was discovered in the room, but motel guest John Lofton, 32, said he smelled unusual chemicals in the motel hallways after the shooting.

"I saw the two officers come in, and they were acting like normal," said Lofton, a tour bus driver from Dayton, Ohio. "Then I didn't hear anything, and I was right upstairs."

Laurie Dahle of St. Louis was staying with her three sons and other members of a swim team at the motel.

Dahle could not recall hearing any shots, but her son, Michael Dahle, 11, recalled hearing popping sounds while he was taking a bath.

"It's amazing that he heard anything with the TV on and him in the bath," Laurie Dahle said.

In spite of the shooting, the swim team will stay at the motel through Sunday night, she said. "With all the police here, it's safe now."

Moore has been with the Cape Girardeau Police Department for 23 years and May for nearly 16 years.

Kinnison said the last time a Cape Girardeau officer killed an assailant was in December 1984, when reserve officer Winford Griffith shot Ricky Dean Burton, 29, twice in the chest in the emergency room of Southeast Missouri Hospital. The jury at a coroner's inquest ruled Griffith acted in self-defense after Burton threated him with a pocketknife.

Managing editor Heidi Hall contributed to this report.