News-Record.com

WILMINGTON (AP) - The manhunt for a suspect charged with killing his ex-girlfriend, a New Hanover County detention officer, ended abruptly Thursday when he committed suicide in a nearby county.

New Hanover sheriff's officials said Anthony Antwand Bowen, 30, shot himself with a handgun shortly after 4:30 p.m. Thursday after police tracked him to a wooded area of southwest Onslow County.

Authorities had charged Bowen with first degree murder in the death of Tarica Ann Pulliam, 27, who had worked for the sheriff's office for two years and leaves behind a 7-year-old daughter.

Sheriff's office spokesman 1st Sgt. Tim Fuss said investigators believed Bowen approached Pulliam shortly after 5 a.m. Wednesday morning as she was leaving home for work, shot her several times and then fled. She died later that morning at New Hanover Regional Medical Center.

Public records show both Bowen and Pulliam had lived in the same Wilmington apartment until April. On April 1, Pulliam said in an affidavit for a domestic violence protective order that Bowen choked her until she nearly lost consciousness, then punched her in her left jaw.

"He then stated that he was going to finish what he started," she wrote in April. "He said that he was going to get his gun. As he reached in the closet, my mother knocked on the front door."

He was charged with assault on a female, second-degree kidnapping and assault by strangulation for the incident. He was also charged with first-degree kidnapping in a case involving another woman from an incident a few days later.

Through the sheriff's office, Pulliam's family declined to comment.