Suspect in officer killings eludes law in Seattle
Photo credit: Getty Images | In this handout photo provided by the Pierce County Police Department on Nov. 29, 2009, Maurice Clemmons, a person of interest in the killing of four Lakewood Police Officers in Parkland, Wash. is pictured. A gunman shot and killed four Lakewood Police Officers in a Forza Coffee Company shop Sunday morning in what authorities are describing as a targeted attack.
4 Police Officers Shot Deadat Wash. Coffee House
Official: Wash. OfficersMay Have Been Targeted
SEATTLE - A heavily armed SWAT team stormed a Seattle home Monday where they thought they had cornered the suspect in the slaying of four police officers at a coffee shop, only to find out that he was not in the house and still on the loose.
The discovery added new urgency to the manhunt for Maurice
Clemmons as police canvassed the neighborhood with search dogs and hundreds of officers were deployed around Seattle for any sign of the suspect. Authorities put up a $125,000 reward for information leading to his arrest.
Police had been positioned overnight at a Seattle home where
they thought Clemmons was holed up and spent hours trying to
communicate with him, using loudspeakers, explosions and even a
robot sent into the house. But when the SWAT team went inside, he
was nowhere to be found.
Pierce County sheriff’s spokesman Ed Troyer said the location of
Clemmons was not known, and it’s possible he still could be in the
neighborhood. Troyer also said people who know Clemmons told
investigators he had been shot in the torso in his bloody struggle
with the officers.
“If he didn’t get a ride out of there, he could still be in the
area,” Troyer said.
Seattle police spokesman Jeff Kappel said there was evidence
Clemmons at one point was on the property, but officers could not
determine whether he was in the house itself. Kappel would not
describe what the evidence was, but said it was a “good tip” that
led them to the home.
Meanwhile, University of Washington officials alerted students
by e-mail and text messages to an unconfirmed report that Clemmons might have gotten off a bus on or near the campus about 3 miles north of the residence, university police Cmdr. Jerome Solomon said. Police were checking the area, he said.
At one point, what sounded like gunshots rang through the
neighborhood, but Kappel said no shots were fired.
Troyer said warrants for first-degree murder have been issued
against Clemmons in the killings of the officers from the Tacoma
suburb of Lakewood who were gunned down in a coffee shop on Sunday morning at the start of their shifts.
Clemmons has a long criminal history, including a long prison
sentence commuted by former Arkansas Gov. Mike Huckabee nearly a decade ago, and a recent arrest for allegedly assaulting a police officer in Washington.
Authorities allege he killed Sgt. Mark Renninger, 39, and officers Ronald Owens, 37, Tina Griswold, 40, and Greg Richards, 42, as they worked on their laptop computers at the beginning of their shifts.
Clemmons is believed to have been in the area of the coffee shop
around the time of the shooting, but Troyer declined to say what
evidence might link him to the shooting.
Investigators say they know of no reason for gunning down the
officers, but court documents indicate Clemmons is delusional and
mentally unstable.
“We’re going to be surprised if there is a motive worth mentioning,” said Troyer, who sketched out a scene of controlled and deliberate carnage that spared the employees and other customers at the coffee shop in suburban Parkland, about 35 miles south of Seattle.
“He was very versed with the weapon,” Troyer said. “This wasn’t something where the windows were shot up and there bullets sprayed around the place. The bullets hit their targets.”
Officer Richards’ sister-in-law, Melanie Burwell, called the
shooting “senseless.”
“He didn’t have a mean bone in his body,” she said. “If there
were more people in the world like Greg, things like this wouldn’t
happen.
Clemmons has an extensive violent criminal history from
Arkansas. He was also recently charged in Washington state with
assaulting a police officer, and second-degree rape of a child.
Using a bail bondsman, he posted $150,000 — only $15,000 of his own money — and was released from jail last week.
Documents related to the pending charges in Washington state
indicate a volatile personality. In one instance, he is accused of
punching a sheriff’s deputy in the face, The Seattle Times reported. In another, he is accused of gathering his wife and young relatives and forcing them to undress, according to a Pierce County sheriff’s report.
“The whole time Clemmons kept saying things like trust him, the
world is going to end soon, and that he was Jesus,” the report
said.
Troyer said investigators believe two of the officers were killed while sitting in the shop, and a third was shot dead after standing up. The fourth apparently “gave up a good fight.”
“We believe there was a struggle, a commotion, a fight ... that he fought the guy all the way out the door,” Troyer said.
In 1989, Clemmons, then 17, was convicted in Little Rock for
aggravated robbery. He was paroled in 2000 after Huckabee commuted a 95-year prison sentence.
Huckabee, who was criticized during his run for the Republican
presidential nomination in 2008 for granting many clemencies and
commutations, cited Clemmons’ youth. Clemmons later violated his parole, was returned to prison and released in 2004.
On Sunday, Huckabee issued this statement on his Web site:
“Should he be found to be responsible for this horrible tragedy,
it will be the result of a series of failures in the criminal justice system in both Arkansas and Washington state.”
It was the second deadly ambush of police in the Seattle area in
recent weeks, but the two cases aren’t related.
Authorities say a man killed a Seattle police officer on
Halloween night and also firebombed four police vehicles in October as part of a “one-man war” against law enforcement. Christopher Monfort, 41, was arrested after being wounded in a firefight with police days after the Seattle shooting.
The officers killed Sunday had received no threats, Troyer said.
“We won’t know if it’s a copycat effect or what it was until we
get the case solved,” he said.
