A 55-year-old Virginia man with a lengthy rap sheet was arrested Sunday after authorities said he killed a police officer in Carroll County days earlier.
Michael Puckett fled Virginia after allegedly shooting two Carroll County Sheriff’s Office deputies during a Friday night welfare check at his home, killing one and injuring the other, according to the FBI. Puckett’s prior record includes convictions for explosive, gun and assault charges and pending arson and bomb-related charges, court records show.
He was arrested at least four times before his latest case and in 2016 received a 41-year sentence for multiple felonies, court records show. All but eight months of that sentence was suspended for unspecified reasons.
North Carolina’s State Bureau of Investigation (SBI) captured Puckett after using a drone to observe him moving through a neighborhood, the agency said Sunday. Agents found him armed with a handgun and arrested him as he rang the doorbell of someone’s residence, the SBI said.
Virginia’s court database does not yet list an attorney for Puckett’s murder case. He has a pending felony arson charge related to a 2023 arrest, along with charges of possessing an explosive as a felon and manufacturing or possessing a firebomb from a June 2025 arrest.
The arrest concluded a weekend manhunt after federal authorities released warnings to the public that Puckett had “violent tendencies” and “explosive expertise.” At least 16 federal, state and local agencies were involved in tracking him down, according to the North Carolina SBI.
Puckett pleaded guilty in 2016 to explosive possession, having a gun with an altered serial number and having an illegal sawed-off gun, Virginia court documents show. The charges came after police linked Puckett, who they said had a swastika tattoo, to a camp discovered in Ararat containing Nazi paraphernalia and bombs, WXII reported at the time.
Prosecutors dropped a 2015 case accusing Puckett of receiving or buying stolen goods, the records show. He was also found guilty of misdemeanor assault in 2017 and given unsupervised probation, the records show.
A family member of Puckett’s requested the Friday welfare check that led to the sheriff deputy’s death, according to the FBI.
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