DPS trooper shot, killed in East Texas, suspect still at large
Kilgore Police Department officials are shocked to discover that the suspect is a former Kilgore officer

A former Kilgore Police officer is suspected in the shooting death of a Department of Public Safety trooper.

Law enforcement officials early this morning continued a multi-county manhunt across East Texas in search of the suspect who shot and killed a Department of Public Safety trooper involved in a highspeed chase Tuesday night.

DPS spokeswoman Tela Mange said the shooting occurred just before 8 p.m. near the intersection of Farm-to- Market roads 1969 and 729 just northeast of Lake O' The Pines and west of Kellyville.

Authorities identified the trooper as James Scott Burns, who was 39 and married.

Mange said a citizen got on the trooper's radio and called in to the dispatcher that Burns had been shot. Authorities are looking for Robertson and a 1997 blue Dodge Intrepid with Texas license 039-LCG.

Kellyville is about 135 miles east of Dallas, in Marion County.

According to Ronnie Moore, KPD director of public safety, the suspect, Brandon Wayne Robertson, was released from his duties at Kilgore Police Department in 1996 for falsifying a police report and Robertson has had a criminal record since, which includes drug charges and other offenses.

Moore said he believed Robertson may have been living in the Kilgore or Overton area recently, but though he was serving a jail sentence.

Before Tuesday, 82 DPS troopers had died in the line of duty. The last death came on March 14, 2007, when the patrol car of Trooper Todd Dylan Holmes was struck broadside by an 18-wheeler as he attempted to cross the highway to pursue a vehicle.