Investigators think a man had killed his girlfriend hours before shooting and killing a Laurens County sheriff's deputy.

The coroner's office says 38-year-old Nicole Kingsborough was shot once in the face Wednesday evening in her parked car at the Fehrer auto parts plant where she worked in Fountain Inn.

Police decided her boyfriend, 39-year-old Bennie Ray Brown Jr., was a suspect. Brown had been charged with criminal domestic violence two weeks before in an incident involving Kingsborough.

Sheriff Ricky Chastain says deputies went to Brown's home in Clinton, and say he fired on the officers, killing 29-year-old Deputy Roger Rice with a shot that hit just above his bullet-proof vest.

Chastain says Brown was also wounded. He is at a Greenville hospital and is expected to recover.