A country singer who performed alongside Willie Nelson and Waylon Jennings was killed in a shootout with a bounty hunter inside his Tennessee home, police said.
The bondsman was attempting to serve a warrant on Randy Howard after he failed to appear in court for a fourth alleged DUI offense, Tennessee Bureau of Investigation spokesman Josh DeVine told NBC News in an email early Friday.
The 65-year-old was also facing charges of drug paraphernalia, possession of a firearm while intoxicated, and driving on a revoked license.
According to the TBI spokesman, Howard fired first at bounty hunter Jackie Shell inside his home in Lynchburg, Tennessee, on Tuesday night.
Shell, who was working for a firm called "A Plus Bail Bonding," was injured during the incident.
One of Howard's neighbors, Terry Dotson, told NBC station WSMV the circumstances surrounding the singer's missed court appearance.
"One morning I went over there to take him to court and he wasn't ready," Dotson recalled. "He said, 'Well, I'll call them in a couple hours.' And that's when I got mad at him. I said, 'Look, we're supposed to be there at 9 o'clock."
Howard was a key member of the "outlaw country" movement of the 1980s. He released two albums with major record labels Warner Bros. and Atlantic, according to the Taste of Country website.
