Floyd Lusk, a White/Caucasian male associated with Pineville, West Virginia, was serving as a deputy sheriff with the Wyoming County Sheriff's Department when his duties brought him to a residence on January 2, 1909. He was attempting to execute a warrant for assault and battery. The person who had been the victim of that earlier assault accompanied Lusk to the suspect's home, placing both of them at the scene when what was supposed to be an arrest turned deadly.
When Lusk attempted to take the suspect into custody, the encounter erupted into gunfire. The suspect used a handgun or pistol and shot Lusk, killing the deputy in the line of duty. The surviving online law-enforcement account does not identify the shooter by name, nor does it provide a detailed reconstruction of the argument or struggle immediately preceding the shot.
What is established is that Lusk was killed specifically while attempting to make the arrest on the outstanding assault-and-battery warrant, and his death date is recorded as Saturday, January 2, 1909.
The violence did not end with Lusk's shooting. The original assault victim, who had gone with Lusk to the residence, obtained Lusk's revolver after the deputy was shot. That person then shot and killed the suspect. The confrontation therefore left both Deputy Lusk and the person he had come to arrest dead. The suspect did not survive to be arrested, charged, tried, or convicted for Lusk's killing. The available account describes the offender simply as the person Lusk had been attempting to arrest and records the offender's ultimate disposition as having been shot and killed.
Because the suspected killer died during the immediate aftermath of the shooting, there was no later homicide prosecution against that individual for Lusk's death. The online accounts located also do not report that the accompanying assault victim was arrested or charged for killing the suspect, and they provide no information about a criminal trial arising from that second shooting. Likewise, the sources do not supply the suspect's name, age, or other identifying details, leaving the surviving narrative centered on the failed arrest, Lusk's fatal shooting, and the rapid retaliatory shooting that ended the confrontation before authorities could take the original suspect into custody. Floyd Lusk continues to be listed among West Virginia law-enforcement officers who died in the line of duty, with the Wyoming County Sheriff's Department and the year 1909 attached to his memorial record.
