A man fatally shot a woman and killed self after the duo was identified as drug offenders by a police officer who stopped them for a routine traffic check Arizona on Sunday.

The state’s Department of Public Safety (DPS) had revealed that the incident involved 57-year-old Kyle Don Axtell, who had pulled out a handgun and fatally shot 50-year-old Kelly Susanne Nickolson before shooting himself with the same gun.

The DPS, in a statement to the local media, stated that a state trooper had stopped the pickup truck driven by Axtell and had found out that the duo was wanted in Colorado over alleged drug charges.

The public safety department added that when the trooper had returned to the vehicle, he saw Axtell shooting Nickolson and had drawn his gun. The DPS stated that while the officer tried to neutralize Axtell, he subsequently turned the gun toward his head and fired it. The trooper was not injured during the incident.

A spokesman for the Department of Public Safety, Sgt. Kameron Lee, told the media that the investigators were actively pursuing the case and the residence of the duo was being located. Any information on the warrants of the duo was not immediately available.

Both Axtell and Nickolson were pronounced dead at the scene and the DPS termed it a murder-suicide case.

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Representational image Getty Images/Jonathan Alcorn
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