Travis County Sheriff’s Sergeant Craig Hutchinson died July 25 of a self-inflicted gunshot, officials have determined. Williamson County Pct. 3 Justice of the Peace Bill Gravell confirmed Friday the manner of death to be a suicide.
Hutchinson, a sworn officer with the Travis County Sheriff’s Office for 32 years who was set to retire with the rank of sergeant in September, shot himself in his Round Rock backyard at 1:28 that Monday morning. Gravell confirmed at a Friday press conference at Round Rock Police Headquarters that Hutchinson fired a bullet from his TCSO-issued weapon; the bullet pierced his left hand before entering into the left side of his forehead, just above his eyebrow.
Willie Richards, commander of Round Rock Police’s criminal investigations unit, said that Hutchinson arrived home from a work shift at 1:05am on July 25. He logged off his computer at 1:10. Twelve minutes later, at 1:22am, he radioed in to TCSO dispatch: “Start Round Rock to my 42,” he said. (42 in police 10 code references one’s ending tour of duty.) “I’ve got prowlers in my backyard.” He sent another message to the dispatch at 1:23am: “Two running out the backyard to the creek.”
Richards said that TCSO requested assistance from RRPD at 1:25am, and that officers first arrived at Hutchinson’s house at 1:29am. They found Hutchinson lying on the ground 230 feet from the open back gate. His radio was left on, lying next to his body. Richards reported no evidence of any items being taken from the shed in the rear of the home. A single shell case was found “in close proximity to his body.”
TCSO deputies arrived at 1:32am. An ambulance with Williamson County Emergency Medical Services arrived at 1:40am to take Hutchinson to a nearby hospital. He was pronounced dead at 2:25am.
Richards reported that investigators quickly began initiating license plate readers around the area. They closed down nearby roads and enacted air support to search Hutchinson’s neighborhood for the two reported assailants making their escape. In the days immediately following the death, investigators from multiple law enforcement agencies – including RRPD, TCSO, the FBI, U.S. Marshals, and Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, and Firearms – compiled 150 pieces of evidence from the scene and 45 samples of DNA. They took in 125 tips, canvassed 233 houses for information, and made six non-related arrests during the course of the investigation. (Officials are still trying to get a grip on how many hours were spent investigating the cause of Hutchinson’s death.) They learned that neighbors heard a single gunshot, fired at 1:28am, and no evidence of conversation or signs of physical altercations. All fingerprints at the scene identified as Hutchinson’s.
Investigators did not determine whether Hutchinson’s death was the result of homicide or suicide until Monday, Aug. 8, Richards said. That’s in part because of the call Hutchinson had made about two “prowlers” in his backyard, but also because initial reports indicated that the sergeant had suffered from multiple gunshot wounds. It wasn’t until Travis County Medical Examiner J. Keith Pinckard was able to conduct his investigation that he determined the two wounds came from a single shot. Richards said “some pieces came together” on Aug. 8 that indicated to investigators that Hutchinson’s death was likely suicide.
On Tuesday, news came out of the Austin American-Statesman that Hutchinson was facing foreclosure on his house. Friday, officials reported that Hutchinson had faced foreclosure proceedings multiple times since 2011. An auction on his home was scheduled for Aug. 2. His personal vehicle had been repossessed twice since 2011. In recent years, Hutchinson had received a number of diagnoses for anxiety and depression. He’d been prescribed anti-depressants on Dec. 15, 2015, but an autopsy revealed no medicine other than ibuprofen in his system.
Hutchinson’s widow, Vikki McKinney-Hutchinson, disputes Gravell’s conclusion that her husband committed suicide. In a statement sent to KXAN, she wrote, “I simply do not believe that Craig, the kind, confident, and self-assure[d] man we all knew, killed himself.”
Travis County Sheriff Greg Hamilton said Friday that his last conversation with Hutchinson, who he’d known since he first joined TCSO 25 years ago, came two weeks before the sergeant’s death: He said the sergeant was in his office talking about how excited he was about retirement, “moving to a ranch and tending to cattle.”
“A lot of my staff are hurting,” Hamilton added. “We’re going to address that. I don’t know what we’re going to do, but we’re going to address that.”
This article appears in August 12 • 2016.