photo by: Chris Conde/Journal-World

Police work the scene of a shooting at Hy-Vee, 3504 Clinton Parkway, on Tuesday, May 17, 2022.

One of the men involved in Tuesday’s deadly Hy-Vee grocery store shooting was a former police officer from Osage County.

Monty Ray Amick, 53, of Lawrence, was killed along with another man after a road-rage incident led to a shooting in the parking lot of the Hy-Vee, 3504 Clinton Parkway.

Amick served as a police officer in two towns in Osage County, which is south of Topeka.

He served in Scranton — a town of about 700 people — from October 2012 to May 2014, said Bobi Best, city and court clerk of Scranton.

Best told the Journal-World that Amick left on good terms with the department.

Amick served simultaneously in Carbondale — a town of about 1,400 people — from 2012 to 2014, said Carbondale Chief of Police Shannon Seals. Seals said she did not personally know Amick because she started two years after he had left.

On what appears to be Amick’s LinkedIn page, it’s indicated that he worked with Reuter Organ Company at the time of his death and that he had a degree in music education from Pittsburg State University. The Lawrence organ company, when contacted by the Journal-World Thursday, had no comment.

According to Douglas County property records, Amick owned a home on Yellowstone Drive, which is just south of Clinton Parkway, about half a mile from Hy-Vee.

As previously reported by the Journal-World, Amick and Zachary Michael Sutton, 22, both of Lawrence, died Tuesday night after they shot each other in the parking lot of the Hy-Vee grocery store after an apparent road-rage incident, according to the Lawrence Police Department.

Police investigators believe an initial interaction between the occupants of two vehicles occurred near 23rd and Harper streets. At some point Amick reportedly made a remark about the other vehicle’s loud tailpipe, which apparently upset those in Sutton’s vehicle.

The vehicles traveled west on 23rd Street, where a confrontation occurred between the parties near 23rd and Iowa streets.

The vehicles then continued west on Clinton Parkway, where the incident culminated in the shooting at the Hy-Vee parking lot, 3504 Clinton Parkway. Sutton was reportedly a passenger in a 2006 white Ford F-150 truck, and Amick was the driver and sole occupant of a 2007 blue Nissan XTerra, according to police.

Chief Rich Lockhart said Wednesday afternoon that the vehicles eventually parked nose to nose in the Hy-Vee parking lot. Then Sutton and Amick got out of the car with handguns and shot each other. Sutton died at the scene, and Amick, who was taken to an area hospital, died shortly thereafter.

Police are asking anyone who observed the altercation at 23rd and Iowa or the shooting at the Hy-Vee parking lot to call Lawrence Police Department Investigations at (785) 830-7430.