(VOVworld) - A gunman fatally shot a Florida sheriff's deputy outside a law firm on Tuesday morning before barricading himself inside a motel and exchanging gunfire with other deputies before he was killed, officials said.

Okaloosa Sheriff's Office personnel work at the scene of of a law office in Shalimar, Florida where a sheriff's deputy was shot by a man who later fled to the nearby town of Niceville and barricaded himself in a hotel before exchanging gunfire with deputies. (Photo:  AP)

Okaloosa County Sheriff Larry Ashley said Deputy Bill Myers died after being shot multiple times in the back of the head and in the back by 33-year-old Joel Dixson Smith, who had been arrested in 2008 for domestic battery. Smith originally went to his lawyer's office to be given a domestic violence injunction by Myers and turn over firearms to him.