'Dougherty Gang' Sister Attempted to Shoot Officer Before She Was Shot: Cops

Aug. 10, 2011 — -- The manhunt for the "Dougherty Gang" ended today when the oldest of the siblings, sister Lee Grace Dougherty, was chased through a field until she turned on a pursuing officer with an automatic pistol and tried to shoot him.

Before she could fire, the officer shot her in the leg, ending the brief notoriety of Dougherty and her two brothers.

Lee Dougherty, who is a 29-year-old stripper, and her two heavily armed brothers, Ryan, 21, and half-brother Dylan Dougherty Stanley, 26, became the focus of a manhunt that stretched from Florida to Colorado over the past week.

During that time, they fired at a Florida cop and robbed a Georgia bank. They also cleaned out their home arsenal of automatic weapons and sent a text message to their mother with the ominous message, "There's a time for all of us to die."

The trio vanished from sight until they were spotted Tuesday buying camping equipment in Colorado. With police on alert, their vehicle was located this morning in a camp round, but the car was gone by the time police arrived. Cops stumbled across the car at a gas station, prompting a wild 20 mile car chase along I-25 with speeds that topped 100 mph and one of the Doughertys leaning out of the car to shoot at the police.

They lost control of the car near a construction site. The car rolled and the Doughertys tried to scatter, police said.

Lee Dougherty "left the car and took off running" through a field Pueblo County Sheriff Kirk Taylor said at a news conference today. When confronted by an officer who was chasing her, she "turned to chamber a round," Taylor said, but was shot in the leg by the cop before she could fire.

One of the brothers was captured immediately, but a second ran across the highway and towards an area of restaurants and shops where he was found by police.

"There were officers walking about with rifles,"Jack Vette, a civilian who arrived at the site shortly after the fugitives' car crashed, told ABC News. "Police were just walking all over trying to find the other suspect."

Police found some powerful weapons in the car including two machine pistols, two AK-47 assault rifles and a handgun.

Police say Lee Dougherty's injury was not serious. No officers were injured.

Dougherty Gang Captured After High Speed Chase

Vette, who arrived at the scene shortly after the crash, said that 12 to 15 police cars were parked on the highway. Vette, who estimated he was about 250 feet from the crash site, said there was also an ambulance present and paramedics tending to an unidentified person. Vette said it appeared that CPR was being given.

"They loaded the person up on the guerney, put them in an ambulance and left," Vette said.

Police had warned that the trio was heavily armed and feared that would rather die than be captured. Those who know the Doughertys shared that fear.

"I don't think I'm ever going to see her again," Brendon Bookman, the fiance of Lee Dougherty, said before the capture.

"I've always been able to get her out of tight spots in the past, but I can't do anything about this. There's no way I can help her now," Bookman said.

The baby brother of the siblings, Ryan Dougherty, is awaiting the birth of a son with his girlfriend. Investigators think the impending birth might have sent him and his siblings over the edge. Ryan Dougherty was forced to register as a sex offender after sending explicit text messages to an 11-year-old girl. He feared that his sex offender status would prevent him from seeing his soon to be born child.

Ryan Dougherty's girlfriend recently updated her Facebook profile picture to include a picture of her with her now fugitive lover.

Over the weekend she wrote, "I know y u did what did but buddy ur supposed to be there when I deliver."

Their mother, Barbara Bell, had pleaded for them to turn themselves into authorities.

On Tuesday, she told ABC News that she hopes that Dylan Stanley, the sibling with the shortest rap sheet, would set an example and convince the other two that they should surrender. Ryan Dougherty has 14 felony arrests and sister Lee Grace Dougherty has five arrests for hit-and-run and several misdemeanors.