One of Colorado state's top law enforcement officials was shot and killed at his home Tuesday night, just hours before the governor is scheduled to sign landmark gun control legislation drafted in response to a series of mass shootings.
A manhunt was launched by law enforcement officials for the assailant, but no suspects have yet been identified in the attack.
Tom Clements, 58, executive director of the Colorado Department of Corrections, was shot once at his home in the town of Monument, said El Paso County Sheriff's Department Lieutenant Jeff Kramer.
He also said there is also "no information at this point" to indicate the shooting was a suicide.
Colorado Governor John Hickenlooper is on Wednesday scheduled to sign legislation to expand background checks on gun buyers and limit the size of ammunition magazines that may be sold.
Last summer, the Colorado town of Aurora experienced one of the worst mass shootings in a spate of gun killings across the United States, when a gunman fatally shot 12 people inside a movie theater.
In December, the shooting deaths of school children by a gunman in Newtown, Connecticut, intensified a national debate about gun violence.
But an assault weapons ban sought by President Barack Obama ran into trouble on Tuesday when Majority Leader Harry Reid acknowledged there was not enough support for it in the Senate.
Hickenlooper, who counted Clements as an ally, reacted to the news of his death with sorrow.
"I have never worked with a better person than Tom, and I can't imagine our team without him," Hickenlooper wrote in an email sent to state corrections employees early Wednesday morning and posted on the governor's official Facebook page.
The governor ordered state flags to be flown at half-mast on Wednesday.
Clements was appointed in 2011 by Hickenlooper to run the state's prison system, after spending 31 years in the Missouri Department of Corrections, according to the Colorado Department of Corrections.
