Trooper: 'I Wish I'd Killed' Beheading Suspect in Traffic Stop

An Oklahoma Highway Patrol trooper said that "I wish I'd killed" Alton Nolen after he hit her and fled when she tried to arrest him during a 2010 traffic stop that left her with an injured hand.

"I was never afraid of him or I would have," Lt. Betsy Randolph told KOCO-TV in Oklahoma City.

Randolph stopped Nolen in October 2010 because the car he was driving had a paper tag that appeared to be fake, The Oklahoman reports.

She ran a security check and found that Nolen had outstanding arrest warrants on other charges. Randolph then handcuffed his right arm before he pushed her and ran away, the Oklahoman reports.

"In a split second, he exploded out of the car," Randolph told KOCO on Friday. "He hit me in the chest and pushed me back."

Nolen fled into the nearby woods and was arrested after a 12-hour manhunt.

In January 2011, Nolen pleaded guilty in Logan County District Court to assault and battery on a police officer, escape from detention, obstructing an officer and driving under suspension, the Oklahoman reports. He was sentenced to two years in prison and three years' probation.

Nolen, 30, was charged on Saturday with first-degree murder and assault with a deadly weapon in the beheading death of Colleen Hufford, 54, on Thursday after he was fired from the Vaughan Foods food-processing company in Moore, Okla., police said.

He also was charged with stabbing Traci Johnson, 43. During that attack, Nolen was shot and wounded by Vaughan Foods chief operating officer Mark Vaughan, who is a reserve sheriff's deputy, police said.

Both Nolen and Johnson were hospitalized.

Nolen has ties to radical Islam, including a Facebook page that includes images celebrating Osama bin Laden and jihadists, and pictures of him in Muslim religious attire and reading the Quran.

He had tried to convert his colleagues to Islam, and the FBI was looking into his background, police said.

Regarding the 2010 traffic stop, Randolph told CNN that she did not shoot Nolen during the altercation because "I felt like I was in control of the traffic stop. Obviously, I wasn't.

"I was a lot more confident in my skills than I should have been," she said on Saturday. "And I just felt terrible. I feel guilty. And I don't know that that's something I'll ever be able to overcome.

"But I do feel guilty," Randolph added. "That's all I can say. I just feel guilty about that."

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