Lavonte Lloyd [right], 23, of Madison County, Mississippi, reportedly kidnapped and killed his 1-year-old daughter, Kamaya [left], before shooting himself on Thursday.

A 23-year-old man from Madison County, Mississippi shot his 1-year-old daughter, before turning the gun on himself  three counties away Sunflower County, on Thursday. Officials say he kidnapped her, fled from police, before the murder-suicide along a Mississippi Delta highway.

Holmes County Sheriff, Willie March, said that it was the third day this week that Lavonta Lloyd had sought to take his toddler from her mother: “It’s a terrible situation,” March said.

Sheriff March said Lloyd first took his daughter Kamaya Lloyd from a day care on Monday, but Kamaya was returned to her mother later that evening. Then, on Tuesday, deputies were called when Lloyd resurfaced at the mother’s home in the 400-person town of Cruger, about 70 miles north of Jackson.
Deputies chased Lloyd down some railroad tracks but lost his trail after he escaped into a cornfield. Officers were called off the search because someone escaped from the county’s jail, March said.

Kimberly Outlaw’s family revealed that Lloyd [seen L-R with Kimaya], had been causing trouble for over a year. Thursday was the third time he had kidnapped the toddler in recent weeks

The child’s mother, Kimberly Outlaw, on Monday  filed a domestic violence petition Monday against Lloyd in Holmes County Chancery Court.  The case was pending when Lloyd rendered the suit null and void by taking his life and the life of his daughter judge didn’t hear the case before Lloyd’s death. Police could not confirm if Lloyd was aware that Outlaw was pursuing charges.

On Thursday, Outlaw’s mother called the sheriffs’s office early in the morning to say Lloyd was holding Outlaw at gunpoint.  Lloyd fled Cruger before deputies arrived, but until he reportedly fired shots. No one was injured.

After Lavonte Lloyd’s truck [photo] after it rolled off the road and into a ditch in Moorhead, Sunflower County On Thursday. Police found his body, and that of his baby daughter, inside the vehicle, both dead from gunshot wounds.

His actions then set off a 30-mile chase. Deputies chased Lloyd across three counties in the flatlands of the Mississippi Delta. Before reaching a roadblock, Lloyd’s truck veered off the road and into a deep ditch near Moorhead, in Sunflower County.

March said deputies couldn’t see the truck because of the ditch and the truck’s tinted windows. A shield was brought to the scene to protect deputies, March said, but when they broke open the driver’s side window, they found Lloyd and the girl dead.

“The baby was on top of him and had been shot,” Leflore County Sheriff Ricky Banks, whose deputies also took part in the chase, told The Greenwood Commonwealth.