St. Petersburg, Florida - Armed and hiding in the attic, Hydra Lacy, Jr. was a desperate man. He'd already spent time in prison and he told people he wasn't about to go back.

"He had been to see me," said Lacy's stepmother, Willie Mae Norton, at the scene. "He told me, 'I'm not going back to jail no more.'"

Authorities were hunting for Lacy because in November he'd skipped out on a trial for domestic violence. He was accused of beating his wife, Christine Lacy, in 2009 so severely that she had to be hospitalized.

"The last incident, you could barely recognize her face. Her nose was twisted, she had black eyes, she had IVs hooked up to her," said a close friend of Christine's who did not want to be identified. "He almost beat her to death."

Lacy was supposed to go on trial last November on that domestic violence charge, but he never showed up for court. Since then, a fugitive task force had been trying to track him down and, this morning, they showed up at Christine's house with a warrant.

Lacy has a long criminal record, including convictions for sexual battery and false imprisonment of a child, burglary, grand theft auto and resisting an officer with violence. He spent more than a decade in prison. For criminal record details, click here.

Hydra Lacy's brother, Jeff Lacy, is a former champion boxer who has talked about the sport keeping him out of trouble. But it appears when Hydra Lacy turned his fists on Christine, he started down the road to today's deadly gunfight, leaving the community and his own family to grieve. Norton says, "I care, he done live with me all his life."

Investigators are now trying to determine how Lacy died. He may have been shot by police or he may have taken his own life.

Kathryn Bursch, 10 News