What began as a traffic stop just after 6:30 p.m. turned into an exchange of gunfire in front of a gas station today, leaving a suspect dead and a Franklin County deputy sheriff shot and in surgery.

Sheriff’s office spokesman Marc Gofstein released no names yet, but said the deputy is at OhioHealth Grant Medical Center. The deputy is expected to survive, Gofstein said.

It all started at 6:34 p.m. when a deputy tried to stop a black pickup truck at Harrisburg Pike and Clime Road and the driver fled. A pursuit lasted about six minutes and ended when the truck crashed in front of a Shell station at the intersection of Hopkins Avenue and Harrisburg Pike, southwest of downtown Columbus.

Gofstein couldn’t say why the deputy initially attempted to stop the pickup.

It remained an active scene, with people gathering in every nearby parking lot — at the Walgreens, a CVS and the Home Town Motel.

Several people were in the back of cruisers, but authorities said they were witnesses, not other suspects.

The suspect’s body was at the scene at the edge of Hopkins Avenue covered by a sheet.

Tasia White lives just down the street, and was in line at the Walgreens across the street when she heard several loud booms.

"I thought someone had a flat tire," she said, still obviously shaken about 45 minutes later. "I mean, why would I think it was a shootout?"

Then someone came running in the store’s front door. "He said a cop got shot. I was like, ‘Oh, no. Oh, no.’"