Matheos S. Pitikas, a 24-year-old fugitive from Texas who had eluded local lawmen since firing on them on Friday, shot and killed himself on Sunday in the back yard of a home as deputies closed in, according to the Walton County Sheriff's Office.
“There were three ways this was going to end: He was going to kill himself, we were going to kill him or he was going to go to jail. He chose option one,” Walton County Sheriff Michael Adkinson said.
Walton and Okaloosa County sheriff’s deputies were closing in on Pitikas in a Point Washington area neighborhood on Choctawhatchee Bay, near where he had fled authorities two days earlier. At about noon Sunday, he walked through the yard of a home on Oak Avenue, but stopped in his tracks when he spotted a deputy.
The residents of the home were packing up to leave when one of them saw Pitikas on the side of the house.
“We locked eyes, then I started screaming, ‘That’s him,’ and ran inside to call 911,” said a woman who identified herself as Sondra. She and her husband, Gerald, asked not to be identified by last name after hearing rumors that Pitikas had family in the area.
Minutes later, “five or six deputies popped up on him all of a sudden,” said Adkinson, who added that several “unmarked deputies” had been in the area since Friday.
The deputies chased Pitikas through the yard. He ran to the back yard and behind a shed, where he shot himself.
“I heard one gunshot and that was it,” Gerald said.
Pitikas had one round left in his 9 mm semi-automatic and he used it on himself, Adkinson said.
The fugitive’s suicide ended a manhunt that had begun about 48 hours earlier. At about 12:30 p.m. Friday afternoon near the Whale’s Tail restaurant in Miramar Beach, a deputy was approaching a blue pickup truck when the driver fired shots at the deputy as he sped off east on Scenic Gulf Drive, according to a witness.
The witness said he later saw the truck race back west on the beachfront road with deputies in pursuit.
The Sheriff’s Office said Pitikas fired at deputies during the chase and after he crashed his truck at the corner of County Road 283 and Chrysler Avenue before he ran into the woods in Point Washington. It was unclear Sunday evening whether the 9 mm Pitikas used to take his life was the same gun used Friday. Read a witness account: 'That stainless steel pistol in his hand did a number on me' ?
Pitikas’ body is on its way to the Medical Examiner’s Office for an autopsy. Deputies searched vacant homes in the area after the incident in order to determine where Pitikas had spent the last two days.
Agencies statewide and across three counties then launched what is being called the largest manhunt in Walton County history. But Pitikas eluded lawmen for almost 48 hours. 'Like something out of a movie': Read the story, see photos and watch video ?
Pitikas was wanted by the FBI and Houston Police Department after allegedly robbing a Chase Bank in the Houston suburb where he had apparently grown up, according to the South Belt-Ellington Leader. A July 30 article stated that Pitikas had escaped on foot and used three-foot high underground drainage pipes to elude capture.
A police officer spotted Pitikas in the pipe and fired at him before Pitikas crawled into the pipe and escaped.
circumstances, we would have been right there with you. Thank God you all are safe. I know if Flo, Angel and Griff had been in the yard, he would have had the beejeesus scared out of him! As it is, my 10 year old son had been checking the updates on here every half hour trying to see if he had been caught yet. I am thinking this is the perfect time to address safety at the schools ; I know most people are talking about it at home. But, I think there are lingering ramifications for all of our children that need to be talked about. 
thank you WCSO!! A fine job of protecting everyone in SoWal!