Johnson County man killed in shootout with law officers

A 30-year-old man was fatally shot by law enforcement officers Wednesday after a nearly three-hour standoff at his home, Johnson County Sheriff Bob Alford said.

Nathan Lee Bailey, 30, was pronounced dead at 1:50 p.m. after he shot at sheriff’s deputies and Department of Public Safety troopers outside the home he and his father shared, Alford said in a phone interview.

At 10:41 a.m., a deputy spotted a man driving about 100 mph down a highway and connected him to the theft of a .357-caliber pistol from a Mansfield-area pawnshop, Alford said.

Deputies chased the car to the 4000 block of Vista Ridge Lane where Bailey jumped out of the car and ran into the house, the sheriff said.

Neighbors called Bailey’s father at work, and he promptly came home and told officers there were guns in the house, Alford said.

The father spoke to his son on a public address system, and officers threw a cellphone into the house to try to get Bailey to talk to someone, the sheriff said.

“He never picked it up,” Alford said. “He never verbally responded.”

At one point, Bailey emerged from the back of the house and started firing at deputies with the stolen pistol, hitting an electrical box, a trailer and a storage building, the sheriff said.

Then he came out of the side of the house and walked toward the front and started shooting at troopers and deputies, senior DPS trooper Dub Gillum said.

Alford said Bailey fired four more times, hitting a patrol car.

“I had deputies within 3 feet of what he hit,” he said.

Troopers and deputies returned fire, killing him.

The body was taken to the Tarrant County medical examiner’s officer. Texas Rangers are investigating how many officers fired at Bailey and who fired the fatal shot, Gillum said.

No one else was injured.

This story was originally published January 27, 2016 at 4:45 PM with the headline "Johnson County man killed in shootout with law officers."