“Deputy Matt Williams,” said Wood, a Polk County Sheriff’s Office spokeswoman. “He left a wife and three children.”

Just moments before, a somber Sheriff Grady Judd had described how a routine lunchtime traffic stop went awry, leaving Williams, 39, and his K-9 dog dead. A second deputy, Douglas Speirs, also 39, was wounded in the leg. He is expected to make a full recovery.

“It’s been a very bad day at the sheriff’s office,” Wood said to another caller, doing her job and grieving at the same time.

The suspect in the shooting - tentatively identified late Thursday night - remained at large into the night. Throughout the day, over a large swath of north Lakeland, schools were locked down, streets were sealed off and residents were told to stay inside.

Police and television helicopters, as many as seven at one time, hovered above. Hordes of law enforcement officers representing virtually every agency in West Central Florida moved from house to house in a very personal manhunt.

Investigators said they had a photo of the man they were looking for. But they were far less certain of his supposed name - Eswardo O. Ramclaim - and Miami address, which they took from an identification card.

Both were likely bogus, Judd said.

The crimes are not. The man is accused of ambushing the two deputies who pursued him into a wooded area, killing Williams with multiple shots - on his wife’s birthday.

The hunt for the shooter would continue overnight, Judd said, and the more than 500 officers on the case were ready for the possibility of more violence.

“We’re prepared for a gunfight if he wants a gunfight,” Judd said.

Just Another Traffic Stop

The awful afternoon started with a traffic stop.

Speirs, who works in the sheriff’s traffic unit, noticed a driver speeding on 10th Street as he crossed Interstate 4 heading south in a rental car, Judd said. Speirs pulled him over near 10th and Wabash Avenue at 11:45 a.m.

Judd, based on preliminary interviews of Speirs, gave this account of what happened next:

The driver was unable to produce a license and gave Speirs what is thought to be a fictitious name. It is unclear whether it was the Ramclaim name. Speirs, who had called for assistance, went back and forth with the man, who finally asked, “Are you going to take me to jail?”

Speirs gave a noncommittal answer, and moments later the driver bolted from the car for a densely wooded area nearby.

Speirs set up a perimeter with the help of other deputies. Williams responded with Diogi, a German shepherd. He and Speirs went into the woods after the driver.

About 12:30 p.m., “several shots” rang out from the woods. Speirs and the driver then exchanged fire, both using ditches in the area as cover.

At some point in the gunbattle, Williams and Diogi were fatally wounded. Speirs was hit in the leg. It is unclear whether the driver was hit. Judd said the dog “likely engaged” the driver before being killed.

He “may be bitten,” Judd said.

In the confusion and thick brush of the wooded area, it took responding deputies some time - exactly how long was not clear - to find Williams and Diogi.

But the time lag would not have made a difference in saving Williams’ life because of the number and nature of his wounds, Judd said. He did not elaborate.

Judd said he did not know whether the deputies were wearing bullet-proof vests. The sheriff’s office does not require deputies to wear the vests. But most do, Judd said.

Both deputies were taken to Lakeland Regional Medical Center, while the driver remained at large.

Within moments, police vehicles from across Polk County were screaming to the scene and later to a command center set up in a grassy lot next to nearby Kathleen High School.

Other deputies sealed off streets leading into a 2- to 3-square-mile area north of Memorial Boulevard and south of I-4.

Waves of officers in body armor filled the command center lot quickly. They were joined by personnel from at least 10 agencies, including the federal Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives; the Florida Department of Law Enforcement; and the Orange and Hillsborough counties sheriff’s offices.

By midafternoon, hundreds of officers were engaged in the hunt, which many observers said was the most intense police presence they had ever seen in Polk County.

Suspect Surfaces, Shoots Again

Officers poured in and out of the search zone all afternoon.

Sometimes they worked on foot, at other times they tore up and down Wabash, Memorial and side streets in long, single-file convoys.

The closest reported contact with the driver came just a few minutes after the shooting when he appeared from behind a house near 10th Street where a Lakeland police detective was canvassing, Judd said.

The man fired twice at the detective, Judd said. He missed.

The detective returned fire but missed the shooter, who fled again.

The driver’s identity was vexing to law enforcement all day. Whoever Ramclaim is, Judd thinks he may be involved “in a narcotics ring.”

And he had a message for anyone who would help him.

“If you know him and you hide him, you’ll go to jail, too,” he said.

Residents of the area were asked to stay indoors. There were no forced evacuations. Judd said that would have been impractical. He estimated that up to 15,000 people live in the area of the manhunt.

Judd said he had no doubt about the threat the man posed.

“He has the ability and the will to shoot,” Judd said. “He’s really dangerous. Anyone who gets in his way will get shot as well.”

Tony Black, 34, and his two young sons stood outside their home on Crutchfield Road, just north of the command center, late Thursday afternoon. They quietly watched the spectacle of firepower and equipment deployed on their normally quiet street.

“This is serious,” Black said. “I saw a tank pull up to the command center.”

He was probably referring to a heavy police vehicle capable of being used like a ram for entry into a home or building.

A Long School Day

Less than 200 yards from Black’s home, the 1,600 students of Kathleen High were locked inside the campus. No parents were allowed in; no students were allowed out.

Fred Murphy, head of support services for the school district, said the lockdown was purely a precaution.

“The students are in no danger,” Murphy said at an afternoon news conference.

Some parents lingered for hours outside the school, waiting for word on when their children may be allowed to leave.

Renee Lindsay had been speaking to her daughter by cell phone and expressed concern because she said no officers had been in to check on the students in her room.

Many students were in a large room, watching news coverage of the manhunt, Lindsay said.

Her daughter is in the 10th grade, she said.

Students were kept at the school into the evening until they were finally transferred by bus to Victory Church, several miles north on Griffin Road.

The transfer was overseen by law enforcement officers with high-powered rifles. Crowds of parents were still picking up their children from the church after 10 p.m.

Two other schools near the search area, Winston Elementary and McKeel Academy, were locked down earlier in the day.

But students who live outside the search were allowed to go home with their parents at about normal times. Those who do were kept at the school longer, Murphy said.

Murphy said bus service for virtually “all of north Lakeland” was disrupted.

Kathleen High and McKeel Academy will be closed today. All other Lakeland schools will open as planned.

‘A Fine Man, A Dedicated Deputy’

Relatives, friends and neighbors gathered Thursday evening at the Williams residence, a ranch-style home on a sleepy, rural road in Polk City, to share their grief and console one another over the deputy’s death.

Mothers embraced their children. Teenagers stood quietly on a concrete basketball court built next to the two-story house. Small groups of people lingered on the front lawn.

People spoke softly among themselves. No one wanted to comment.

Williams, whose full name was Vernon Matthew Williams, is survived by his wife, Nancy, and three teenage children. He began working for the sheriff’s office in 1994. He had worked in the K-9 division since 2000.

Judd called Williams “a fine man, a dedicated” deputy, adding forcefully, he “ran into the woods with his K-9 to serve the people of Polk County. That’s why you can sleep safely at night.”

Speirs is married, with a 19-year-old stepson and 9-year-old son.

Speirs’ mother, Shirley, lives in Michigan. While talking to a reporter at 5:20 p.m., she received a call from her son telling her he was all right.

“We’re very thankful, but we feel bad for Matt’s family,” Shirley Speirs said.

Douglas Speirs and Williams had a long history together, working in the state prison system before joining the sheriff’s office.

Speirs was released after treatment at Lakeland Regional Medical Center.

Speirs will turn 40 on Oct. 18.

“He loves his job, and he’s very special,” his mother said. “I’m just glad he’s going to be OK.”