Detective Pat Cannon, who heads the Butler County Drug Task Force, said he was saddened to hear about the death of FBI Special Agent Samuel Hicks Wednesday morning.

But being attacked while serving arrest warrants, as Hicks was doing when he was fatally shot, is just a danger of the job, Cannon said.

Hicks, 33, who worked in the FBI's Pittsburgh office, was taking part in a roundup of drug suspects. He was sent to the home of alleged cocaine dealer Robert Korbe, 39, and was shot at about 6 a.m. Wednesday. He died shortly afterward.

Korbe's wife, Christina, has been charged with the shooting.

"You're serving an arrest warrant on someone you believe is a criminal or who has committed criminal acts," Cannon said. "You check their background, their previous record to see if they are violent.

"You can have on body armor and other officers with you and you don't walk out in the open, but you are approaching the suspect's home. They can see you, but you can't see them, and if they want to kill you, then they have a good chance of doing it," he said.

Thirty years ago, Cannon said, when he became a police officer, he didn't really think about getting shot or stabbed.

"I used to love bar fights. Now this is back in the beat-walking days, and if I heard the call, I'd run hoping the fight wouldn't be over before I got there," he said.

"I found them exciting and the worst thing that would probably happen is that someone would try to hit you," Cannon remembers.

Now, with the combination of growing older and changes in society, Cannon has lost his excitement for bar and domestic fights, that can routinely end in gunshots or knife wounds with law enforcement officers an extra target.

"Of course, the officers of today are much better trained than we were to deal with such things, but back then I didn't think I would get hurt.

"Now, I'm doing everything I can to make sure we're doing things as safely as we can. I sure think about it a lot more," he said.