Officers Richard Crittenden and Julie Olson of the North St. Paul Police Department saved two women from a man who charged at them with a burning rag during a "very intense and very violent battle."

"The officers did not flinch, they did not retreat," said North St. Paul Police Chief Tom Lauth. "I can't say more for their heroic actions. You can't plan and say, 'I'm going to react this way.' They passed the true test of humanity there."

It started as the latest in a long string of domestic spats in a tumultuous relationship, and ended in a spray of 14 gunshots, a dead officer, a dead suspect, a wounded officer and two traumatized police departments. Details of the brief but violent encounter were first made public Wednesday.

Crittenden, the North St. Paul officer who was killed, and Olson, a Maplewood officer, met Stacey Terry, 39, and her teenage daughter about 8:30 a.m. Monday at the apartment at 2253 Skillman Av. in North St. Paul. The mother and daughter had been gone overnight, and they returned home worried that Terry's estranged husband, Devon Dockery, was waiting in ambush inside.

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