VIRGINIA BEACH, Va. — The driver accused of "executing" two police officers calmly walked away following a traffic stop in Virginia Beach on Friday night, according to the city's police chief.
Officers Christopher Reese and Cameron Girvin tried to pull over a blue Hyundai with expired plates along South Rosemont Avenue around 11:30 p.m., Virginia Beach Police Chief Paul Neudigate said during a news conference Saturday afternoon.
That suspect failed to yield and they pursued the driver to the dead end of Sylvan Court. That is when the driver exited the car and a "tussle" ensued, Neudigate said.
WATCH: Suspect calmly walked away after ‘executing' officers in Virginia Beach, police chief says
The suspect, 42-year-old John McCoy III, whom Neudigate vowed to only name once, pulled a pistol from his pocket and shot Reese and Girvin during the tussle.
“Those officers fell to the ground,” Neudigate said. “While on the ground, defenseless, he shot them each a separate time... After he executed our officers, he calmly walked away."
Both officers were taken to hospitals, but Reese was pronounced dead just after midnight and Girvin succumbed to his injuries several hours later.
While looking for the suspect, officers found McCoy's body inside a shed behind the apartment complex where he had stopped his car around 12:10 a.m. He had a self-inflicted gunshot wound to the head, according to police.
"The determination and cause of death will be up to the medical examiner, but I could say that our preliminary investigation at this point... lends us to believe that this is a self-inflicted gunshot wound," Neudigate said. “At no time did any of our officers fire shots."
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Neudigate said the department is reeling from the tragedy.
“I’m gonna be quite honest, we’re all hurting,” Neudigate said. “We’ve got an officer that is 25 years old, another one that is 30, with such a future ahead of them… senselessly taken.”
The last time the police department lost an officer in the line of duty was roughly 17 years ago in 2008.
"The vast majority of our workforce has never experienced loss of this magnitude. So this is this is very earth-shattering for them, and we're very concerned about how they're going to process and move forward," Neudigate said.
As a result, the department doubled up officers in cars on patrol as of Saturday morning.
"What this does is give our officers the ability to have someone in that car with them to help process, help try to make sense of what occurred and to make them feel that they have a semblance of safety," Neudigate explained.
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At the beginning of the news conference, Mayor Bobby Dyer offered a moment of silence for “the heroes who have paid the ultimate price to make Virginia Beach so great.”
“Today, our city is heartbroken,” Dyer added. “No words can ease the pain and loss.”
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