Manhunt For A Mad Dog Killer

Situation: A homicidal maniac is shooting everyone he can see. Now it’s your turn to face him.

Lessons: The more familiar you are with your gun, the more effectively you’ll use it. Take advantage of cover and armor. Be prepared to deal with the violent and merciless. Shooting back is effective and shooting first, more so.

As we begin, some definitions of terminology are in order. In criminal justice argot, a “spree killer” is “someone who commits two or more murders in a short period of time, typically with no significant break between the killings, and often in different locations.”

“Homicidal maniac” is a term that comes straight from the dictionary of the English language. “Homicidal: capable of or tending toward murder; murderous.” “Maniac: a person exhibiting extreme symptoms of wild behavior, especially when violent and dangerous.(‘a homicidal maniac’).”

Like “homicidal maniac,” “mad dog killer” won’t be found in DSM-5, the psychiatric diagnostic manual. I usually associate the term with old noir movies. A mad dog is a rabid animal which tries to bite and kill any living thing it comes near. The rabies is incurable, and the animal must be put down, especially if it is attacking. The mad dog human is essentially the same thing on two legs, shooting or stabbing or clubbing or strangling instead of biting.

In the case we’ll look at now, I sincerely believe all of those descriptions are applicable to the perpetrator.

Opening Shots

February 7, 2025. Gadsden County, Florida sits just east of Tallahassee. At around midnight a stocky, 44-year-old African-American man named Dominic Caroway enters a 24-hour convenience store/gas station located there just off Interstate 10. He draws a silver-colored revolver and robs the store clerk. Then, for reasons that will perhaps never be explained, he shoots and kills the unarmed store clerk and a delivery man who has just walked into the establishment. As he leaves, Caroway encounters two late-night customers about to enter the store and shoots them both down. He leaves them for dead, though they will both survive, and he drives away heading East toward Jacksonville.

A night of terror has begun, and a spree killer is racing through the night.

Initial Pursuit

Law enforcement has become aware of what happened and broadcasts a description of the fugitive vehicle. At about 3:30 AM it is spotted by a Department of Agriculture police officer, who initiates a pursuit that is soon joined by Florida Highway Patrol on I-10 East. Shots are reportedly fired at the pursuing officers by the suspect from his white Jeep SUV.

Caroway takes an exit ramp onto Route 90 East, going into Live Oak, the county seat of Suwannee County located about halfway between Tallahassee and Jacksonville. Caroway goes off the road and crashes his car near a mobile home sales facility. The first police car to pull up at the crash site is driven by Suwannee County Sheriff’s Department Deputy Justin Dalton.

Shootout

Action beats reaction. As Dalton dismounts his patrol car, Caroway is already out of his wrecked getaway car, gun in hand.

Caroway shoots first.

A Hornady .357 Magnum bullet from Caroway’s seven-shot Smith & Wesson Model 686 Plus revolver strikes the young deputy in the chest with several hundred foot-pounds of energy. Off-balance and experiencing body alarm reaction, Dalton loses his balance and falls onto his back. His feet rise as he hits the ground, and Caroway’s second .357 Magnum round burns through Dalton’s foot.

But now the deputy has drawn his own gun, a department issue FN 509 pistol with Holosun green dot sight, and he is shooting back.

Everything changes in an instant. Caroway’s identity changes from mad dog killer to a scalded dog running, and he flees from the deputy as fast as his feet can carry him as a dozen 9mm bullets race after him. The murderer has exulted in his power over helpless victims and thought he could prevail against an armed man when he had the first move advantage, but this is the first time Caroway has faced deadly force – an armed victim shooting back — and his cowardice gives him no stomach for it.

The deputy has been shooting from a distance at a running man in the dark from an extremely disadvantaged position. Caroway, unhit, disappears into the darkness and the trees. The pursuing state officers who have pulled up behind the gunfight focus on assisting the wounded brother cop.

By every logical combat analysis from Sun Tzu and Mushashi onward, forcing the enemy to flee the battlefield means you have won the battle. Deputy Dalton has won this particular gunfight.

But the suspect is still up and running and very, very dangerous.

The pursuit has turned into a manhunt.

Manhunt

Deputy Dalton is medevaced to a hospital in nearby Gainesville. His confrontation with Caroway has taken place at 3:53 AM. The bullet that would have killed him has stopped on his body armor.

The Suwannee County Sheriff’s Department puts out an alert to the citizenry. Local people phone each other in the pre-dawn hours to make sure they know there’s an armed murderer afoot in the neighborhood.

Partner agencies are quick to respond, and soon a hundred or more law enforcement officers saturate the area. The Sheriff’s Department and the Live Oak Police Department call in almost all their sworn personnel. Responding officers from as far away as Jacksonville, some ninety miles distant, are on the scene along with the Gadsden County Sheriff’s SWAT team Columbia County Sheriff’s Office and SWAT Team, Florida Highway Patrol, Lake City Police Department, Florida Department of Agriculture, Florida Department of Law Enforcement, Florida Wildlife Commission, U.S. Marshal’s Service, Suwannee County Fire Rescue, Columbia EMS, Alachua County SWAT Team, the State Attorney’s Office, FDLE Crime Lab out of Tallahassee and Jacksonville to process the different scenes, and agents from the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives.

A command post is set up near the spot where the deputy was shot. The 9-1-1 dispatch center is flooded with calls from alert, nervous citizens reporting strangers in places where the callers think they shouldn’t be. Each report must be checked out.

LOPD Sergeant Michael Estevez is pulling into an auto repair shop with a malfunctioning patrol car when a taxi driver approaches him to describe a suspicious person walking through a semi-rural business, the Suwannee Valley Pinestraw company. Estevez relays the information to Sergeant Mark Pierce, LOPD.

The stage is set for the climax of the manhunt.

Two Tough Cops

Sgt. Pierce has just finished checking out such a report southwest of the Deputy Dalton shooting scene, and determined it to be unfounded, when he is contacted by Estevez. He calls Officer Brandie Harden to come and back him up. Harden races to the scene. They report their arrival to Dispatch at 8:24 AM.

Pierce, 35, has two and a half years on the job, rising fast to sergeant stripes. Prior, he had been a Naval Flight officer in the F/A-18F Super Hornet. Harden, 38, has been with Live Oak PD for almost four years following seven years as a deputy working corrections in the Sheriff’s Department.

Reaching the sprawling scene they drive their patrol cars through long grass to an area of abandoned vehicles where the suspicious person had been reported. As they entered the premises, an employee has waved them toward where the stranger had last been seen, and told them what the man looked like. The description fits that of the gunman they’ve been hunting.

Both officers dismount their vehicles, draw their department-issue GLOCK 21 service pistols to low ready, and spread out to search the area.

Pierce approaches the abandoned cab of an old ambulance. Hardin is about thirty yards to his left.

Hairs go up on the back of the sergeant’s neck when he hears a rustling sound inside the abandoned ambulance. He thinks at first it might be a raccoon. He steps back and to the right of the ambulance’s side door.

What happens next, they’ll both determine later, probably takes no more than three seconds, but they will both remember it in slow motion.

Shootout

Pierce yells in command voice, “Come out with your hands up!”

A dark figure comes around the corner from inside the ambulance cab, and Pierce sees the glint of a silver revolver pointing at him. He shouts, “GUN!”

Harden is the first to fire, from some thirty yards away. Pierce opens fire immediately after. He is moving back, his .45 auto extended in an Isosceles stance, point-shooting at first and then looking over the iron night sights and the top of his slide as he keeps firing.

Harden is also in an Isosceles stance, focusing hard on her front sight, shooting while moving forward in a slight crouch.

The perpetrator moves back away from the officers and then crumples rearward, landing on his back with his legs awkwardly tucked under him. From the ground he extends his .357 toward Harden, and Pierce carefully aims at his hand and fires. Hand and revolver fall but he still hasn’t let go of the gun, so Pierce kicks the .357 out of the prostrate gunman’s bullet-torn hand.

Both officers call in “Shots fired” at 8:33 AM. Within fifteen seconds of that call the sound of many sirens pierces the morning air as reinforcements race to the scene.

The sergeant keeps his GLOCK leveled on the downed suspect as Harden runs to her patrol car for the med kit.

But the med kit isn’t going to help.

The manhunt is over.

And so is the life of the spree killer.

Aftermath

Suwannee County Deputy Sheriff Justin Dalton has recovered from his wounds and returned to duty. Officer Harden and Sergeant Pierce were back on duty after a few days of mandatory administrative leave. All three officers have received awards for the valor they demonstrated on that terrible day. The State’s Attorney’s Office quickly ruled the death of Dominic Caroway to be a justified homicide in the line of duty, publicly stating that the officers acted “courageously, appropriately and legally.”

The killer’s motivation remains a mystery. He had driven to Florida from his home in Arizona to embark on his crime spree. It has been reported that he had recently lost his job as a truck driver and had been dumped by his significant other.

At the time of his death Caroway’s 686-Plus Smith & Wesson had been fully loaded with .357 Magnum rounds, and his pockets were filled with an ample supply of spare ammunition. A .22 rifle was also found in the abandoned ambulance where he had taken refuge, some three miles from the scene where he had crashed his car and ambushed and shot Deputy Dalton.

In his last moments, Caroway had pointed his gun at both of the Live Oak officers. Their gunfire neutralized him before he could pull the trigger. Autopsy showed that Harden, firing as she moved from as far as seventy-some feet away, had put three 230-grain Speer Gold Dot .45 ACP hollowpoints tracking right to left through Caroway’s chest, in an entry wound pattern that, Live Oak Police Captain Jason Roundtree said later, could have been covered with a pie plate. Pierce had put three .45 slugs through Caroway from left to right, plus the hand shot. Round count could be described as “7-7-7”; though neither had been able to count their shots, it turned out that each officer had fired seven times and they had delivered seven hits, all in an estimated three seconds.

Both officers have handled the aftermath well. Sgt. Pierce had yelled commands so loudly at the scene that he lost his voice for a couple of days. Pierce reported that he experienced several physiological effects that are commonly associated with traumatic incidents with a sympathetic nervous system response (fight of flight).

Officer Harden said wryly, “I had some insomnia, but no more than usual in a busy life.” Both took advantage of department-offered counseling, and both found it reassuring. Their families also handled it well. Harden’s husband, a career lawman in another agency, had been in three shootings himself and she found his insights particularly helpful.

Lessons

Let’s start where the deadly spree began, in the convenience store where two innocent people died needlessly and two more were shot. I can find no indication that any of those victims were armed. They were helpless, unable to protect themselves.

Whether Caroway shot those people out of panic or psychopathy, the fact remains that he “had the power” and his victims didn’t. Contrast that to what happened when the same murderer faced righteous armed men and women.

Another lesson: the old saying “breaking news is broken news” is absolutely true and was demonstrated in this case. Early news reports credited an out-of-town SWAT team with killing the gunman. In fact, he was brought to bay and his deadly spree ended by two small town street cops. After seeing the initial incorrect news reports, a brother officer texted Pierce and Harden, “Y’all are a helluva SWAT team.”

In the shootout in front of the mobile home dealership, Caroway had a tactical advantage over Deputy Dalton from the beginning. He got off the first shots. Dalton, down on his back in the dark and hit twice with a .357, had the fighting courage and skill to bring his department issue FN 509 9mm pistol into action immediately and return fire from an extremely disadvantaged position. His fierce determination and will to live coupled with his training to save his own life and send a cowardly murderer and would-be cop-killer fleeing into the night as fast as his feet could carry him.

Similar determination and courage were present when the two Live Oak cops brought the manhunt to its deadly conclusion. Anyone who thinks female police officers can’t handle the toughest parts of the job has never met Brandie Harden. She fired one or more of those shots on the move one-handed as her other hand keyed the mike to report, “Shots fired!” She told me, “I saw him come out, revolver pointed at Pierce, and I thought ‘Nope, Pierce is going home’ while I fired.”

Another lesson: practice on your own time to save your own life and the lives of others. Both Pierce and Harden did so. Harden told American Handgunner, “I grew up in a family of avid deer, hog, and bear hunters.”

Pierce told us, “I have my own range at my house. I practice at least once a month, basic drills like quick draw with two shots at ten feet. I do a lot of dry fire, usually with a red dot equipped pistol, though I don’t have optics on my duty pistol yet.”

Note also that body armor saved Deputy Dalton from what was determined later would have been a fatal chest wound had he not been wearing it.

Here at American Handgunner, our hearts go out to the unarmed helpless victims who were killed or injured by Dominic Caroway, and our hats are off to the courageous law enforcement officers who protected the public from his further depredations. We wish to particularly thank Live Oak Police Chief Keith Davis, Live Oak’s Sergeant Mark Pierce and Officer Brandie Harden, and Suwannee County Sheriff Sam St. John for their cooperation in making this article possible. Credit for the timeline goes to WTXL TV.