The Kansas Bureau of Investigation is working with Great Bend police and Barton County officials after a homicide led to a police chase and then an apparent suicide.
The KBI said police officers were sent to a home on 7th Street in Great Bend shortly after 9 Friday morning. They learned that a man entered a workplace and forced a woman outside where he shot her. The woman, identified as 32-year-old Esmeralda Torres-Lopez, was taken to a hospital where she was pronounced dead.
The 32-year-old suspect left the scene in a pickup, and detectives saw him leaving the area. That led to a chase involving several law enforcement agencies. Officers used a tire-deflation device and then a Barton County deputy forced the pickup off the roadway and into a barbed wire fence on Highway 50 in Stafford County. The truck came to rest in a field, and when officers approached, they found the driver with a gunshot wound to the head. The driver, identified as Mario Martinez-Garcia, was pronounced dead at the scene.
No law enforcement officers were injured. The KBI will conduct an investigation and present its findings to the Stafford County Attorney for review.
