| By Neil Johnson, Big Radio News Staff |
Dane County Sheriff’s officers say a man and a 13-year-old girl were shooting at police out of a vehicle during a chase that wound through rural, southern Dane County Wednesday night.
Dane County Sheriff Calvin Barrett says a 13-year-old girl is dead, and 39-year-old Middleton resident Alex C. Grunke is dead of suicide, after police found him in the basement of a town of Albion farmhouse that he’d fled into after firing a gun into the house.
Police evacuated a family from inside the house during an hours-long standoff that rolled out after a police say they’d chased Grunke’s vehicle through multiple jurisdictions.
Police say Grunke was a person of interest in a homicide of a woman police say rolled out in Dubuque County, Iowa on Wednesday evening.
Police say they blew out Grunke’s vehicle tires with spikes in a chase that included Grunke and a 13-year-old female passenger who police haven’t yet identified. As police chased Grunke’s Ford Escape crossover SUV along county blacktops, Both Grunke and the girl apparently were hanging out of the vehicle, and were shooting at officers using a handgun and a rifle.
No police were hurt, and police did not fire back, Barrett says.
Police say Grunke had barricaded himself in the basement of a house after police disabled his car and both he and the female ran off. This was near Ramsey Road, in an area off Highway 51, a mile west of the Coachman’s Golf resort.
Police say the female ran into some nearby woods, and Barrett says police located her later with a drone, although he says when they found her, she was “unresponsive,” and then died of causes Barrett says police could not immediately determine.
She had no obvious injuries, he says.
Police say Grunke shot a gun into the town of Albion house several times before he ran inside armed with more than one gun. Police ran in and evacuated three residents, a woman and two children. Barrett says after several hours of negotiations trying to get Grunke to come out of the home, police sent in a robot.
Police outside the home said they’d heard numerous gunshots inside, and Grunke was not responding to authorities. Authorities say they found Grunke dead in the basement, apparently of suicide.
The chase involving Grunke and the girl happened after police responded to a report Grunke had dropped an infant off at a house in the town of Dunn and left. That child now is under care of county authorities as the case remains under investigation.
Barrett deferred to the Dane County Medical Examiner’s Office on any further explanation of who the deceased girl is, although he said in a statement at a press conference Thursday afternoon the female is “related, possibly” to Grunke.
Later Thursday, police said the 13-year-old girl found dead in the woods and the infant are apparently the children of the woman killed in Dubuque County on Wednesday.
Barrett said the area has lost “two community members” in the deaths of Grunke and the girl.
He describes the ongoing investigation as complex and involving multiple crime scenes as well as federal, state, county and local police agencies. He says Dane County authorities will release more information on their portions of the investigation as they’re able.
