SEATTLE — Police surrounded a house in the Renton, Wash.,
area Monday night as they continue the hunt for suspected cop killer Maurice
Clemmons.
A relative of Clemmons lives at the house and was taken into
custody, but authorities are still looking for Clemmons, according a law
enforcement source.
The relative is believed to have helped Clemmons elude
capture, the source said.
Clemmons has been getting help and shelter from friends and
relatives since shortly after the Sunday morning shooting deaths of four Lakewood,
Wash., police officers, authorities have concluded.
“Basically, there’s no way that he could be doing this
by himself; he was shot in the abdomen,” said Sheri Badger, Pierce County
spokeswoman at the incident command center.
Also frustrating to law-enforcement officers is that
Clemmons reportedly told acquaintances the night before the attack to
“watch the news” because he was going to “kill cops.”
No one reported his comments to police until after the
attack, Badger said.
The hunt for Clemmons has stretched deep into its second
day, frustrating police as they chase lead after lead across two counties.
A murder warrant has been issued for Clemmons, and officers
thought they had him Clemmons surrounded in a Leschi home late Sunday. But when
a SWAT team finally went in at 7 a.m. PST Monday, the house was empty.
Authorities have since confirmed Clemmons was in the Leschi,
Wash., area last night, though it isn’t clear how he escaped or where he went,
a source said.
Since then, officers have crisscrossed Seattle, chasing down
alleged sightings and blood trails. Clemmons was shot and perhaps seriously
wounded by one of the slain officers on Sunday morning, Pierce County sheriff’s
spokesman Ed Troyer said.
Shortly after noon PST Monday, notice went out for officers
to be on the lookout for a green 1997 Mazda Millenia that had been registered
to Clemmons’ wife, Nicole Cheryleen Smith. They said the car might be headed
toward Arkansas, where Maurice Clemmons once lived.
Washington State Patrol trooper Cliff Pratt said every
trooper patrolling the state’s highways had been alerted to look for the car,
and that troopers are watching all major exits from the state.
He said they’re also watching train and bus stations, and
other transportation hubs.
But by 3 p.m., troopers had been told they could stop
looking for the car. It had been found, and was sold two months ago.
About 1 p.m., six officers in SWAT gear pulled up to Smith’s
Tacoma home and four went inside, escorted by a young man who pulled up in a
silver Honda.
In Seattle, police have followed clues that led them to the
University of Washington, Beacon Hill, Ravenna, the International District and
Leschi. So far, none have panned out.
“We’re responding to citizen calls,” Seattle
police Sgt. Don Smith said.
At 2 p.m., officers were just leaving Cowen Park in Ravenna,
Wash., where a trail of fresh blood had been reported about noon.
Not long before, officers had closed off a street and at
least one building near Maynard Avenue South and South Dearborn Street, after
bloody gauze was found in the street.
Before that, officers had raced to Jose Rizal Park in Beacon
Hill after someone reported seeing Clemmons there. By 10:30 a.m., officers had
walked the park with police dogs and were confident Clemmons wasn’t there.
And earlier in the morning, police swarmed to the University
of Washington after someone reported seeing Clemmons getting off a Metro bus at
the campus. That search led officers to near the UW Medical Center and
apparently into a classroom, but Clemmons wasn’t there.
There is a $125,000 reward for information leading to
Clemmons’ capture.
Police know Clemmons was wounded because they have detained
other people — Troyer wouldn’t say how many — who helped Clemmons after the
shootings.
Badger said every hospital in Washington’s King, Pierce,
Thurston and Snohomish counties has been told to contact police if a patient
shows up for treatment of a gunshot wound.
Lt. Dave McDonald of the Puyallup Police Department said
Monday detectives believe Clemmons was armed with more than one handgun during
Sunday morning’s attack. One handgun used in the shootings was recovered at the
coffee shop where the four officers were slain. Police think he dropped it
during a fight with one of the officers. He was able to kill that officer,
likely with a second handgun
Police found blood in his white Chevrolet pickup, which was
found Sunday in a supermarket parking lot in Parkland, Wash. They also have
eyewitness statements placing Clemmons in Leschi Sunday night.
Investigators have no indication Clemmons had a motive aimed
specifically at any of the particular officers who were gunned down, Troyer
said.
“He was upset about being incarcerated,” Troyer
said. “He was just targeting cops.”
SWAT teams and police negotiators had surrounded the house
at East Yesler Way and 32nd Avenue South earlier on Sunday based on tips given
to police.
Police responded to the home around 8:44 p.m. PST Sunday. A
woman who was leaving the home was stopped by officers and told them Clemmons
was on the property and bleeding.
The woman told police someone had dropped Clemmons off at
his aunt’s home.
The series of events leading up to the standoff at house in
Leschi began more than 16 hours earlier at an upscale coffee shop in Parkland,
Pierce County, a hangout for officers that became the scene of the deadliest
attack on law enforcement in state history.
Four officers were shot and killed at 8:15 a.m. as they
worked on their laptops at Forza Coffee Company in Parkland. The first two
officers were “flat-out executed,” while the third tried to stop the
gunman and the fourth fired at him, Pierce County sheriff’s spokesman Ed Troyer
said.
Those killed were identified as Sgt. Mark Renninger, 39, and
officers Ronald Owens, 37, Tina Griswold, 40, and Gregory Richards, 42.
Lakewood Police Chief Bret Farrar held a news conference
Monday morning.
“We’re a young department. They were good people and
we’ll miss them very much,” he said. “We will get through this but it
is a very, very tough time for us and the families of our fallen officers. I
met with the families yesterday; it was the hardest thing I’ve ever done.”
Farrar said he has “no doubt this person will be
brought to justice.”
Clemmons has a long criminal record in Arkansas and
Washington. He was released from custody in Pierce County just a week ago, and
was facing a charge of raping a child. Family members described him as being in
a state of mental deterioration. Last spring, he was also accused of punching a
sheriff’s deputy in the face.
Sunday’s shootings came as officers from across the state
were still coming to terms with last month’s ambush-slaying of Seattle police
Officer Timothy Brenton. The two incidents do not appear related, police said.
The coffee shop, in a strip mall across the street from
McChord Air Force Base, is favored by officers from several nearby
jurisdictions.
Troyer said the scruffy-looking gunman entered the shop,
walked past the officers and three or four other customers, and approached the
counter.
A young barista asked the man if she could help him,
according to Humberto Navarrete, 51, who lives nearby and later spoke to the
barista. The man stared at the barista without saying a word and then opened
his coat, revealing a handgun, Navarrete said.
The barista and another female barista on duty ran out the
back, according to Navarrete. The gunman turned and started shooting at the
officers, he said, quoting the women.
“This was a targeted, selective ambush,” Troyer
said.
The officers, who made up one patrol unit, were regulars at
the coffee shop. They were wearing bulletproof vests and were preparing to
start their day shift, Troyer said.
The first two officers apparently had no time to react. The
third officer stood up and tried to go for the gunman before being shot, Troyer
said. The fourth officer struggled with the gunman, wrestled him out the door
and managed to fire off some shots before he, too, was killed, Troyer said.
It’s not clear if the gunman was injured by gunshots.
“It’s carnage out front everywhere,” Troyer said,
describing the front of the coffee shop. “It’s like a bad horror movie,
it’s horrible.”
Navarrete, a financial manager who lives a block from the
coffee shop, said he was in a nearby AM-PM minimart Sunday morning when the two
baristas from the coffee shop ran into the store crying and upset.
Brad Carpenter, CEO of Forza Coffee, met with the two young
baristas after they were interviewed by police and said they were shaken up.
The slain officers were “well-known to our staff,”
said Carpenter, a retired police officer from Oakland, Calif., and Gig Harbor.
“It’s supposed to be a safe haven for everybody,”
he said of the coffee shop.
The shootings rank as the worst attack on law enforcement in
state history. Three Seattle police were shot and killed by a gunman in January
1921.
Carpenter, the Forza CEO, said donation boxes to help the
families of the slain officers will be in place Monday at all 22 Forza stores
in Washington and Colorado, and that information would be placed on the company
Web site about making contributions.
Several hundred mourners gathered at Champions Centre, a
church in Tacoma, for a memorial service for the officers Sunday night. And a
procession of vehicles accompanied two vehicles that transported the bodies
from Parkland to the Pierce County Medical Examiner’s Office in Tacoma.
Via McClatchy-Tribune News Service. © The Seattle Times.
