SEATTLE — A Seattle police SWAT team Monday morning swarmed
a home surrounded overnight but did not find suspected cop killer Maurice
Clemmons inside.
A murder warrant has been issued for Clemmons, the man
suspected of killing four Lakewood, Wash., police officers Sunday in a coffee
shop, Pierce County sheriff’s spokesman Ed Troyer said.
Police had surrounded the home late Sunday night and Troyer
said the search of the house finished shortly after 7 a.m. Officers searched
with a robot before SWAT officers moved in.
Officers are still searching the neighborhood, including
nearby houses, for Clemmons. There is a $125,000 reward for information leading
to his capture.
Clemmons was shot and perhaps seriously wounded by one of
the slain officers Sunday morning, Troyer said.
“He has suffered a gunshot wound,” Troyer said at
a media briefing held just before 3 a.m.
Police know that Clemmons was wounded because they have
detained other people — Troyer wouldn’t say how many — who helped Clemmons
after the shootings.
At the briefing, Troyer said police now consider Clemmons a
suspect, rather than merely a “person of interest.”
Police don’t know the severity of Clemmons’ wound, and
Troyer said he may already be dead.
Investigators have no indication that 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.”
A trailer on the property where police first thought
Clemmons was hiding was empty when officers entered it early Monday morning.
A short time earlier, they had issued an ultimatum for
anyone inside the trailer to come out, but got no response.
That was followed by a series of flash-bangs, distraction
devices which can temporarily blind a suspect. Discharges of what appeared to
be tear gas followed.
SWAT teams and police negotiators had surrounded the house
at East Yesler Way and 32nd Avenue South earlier in the day based on tips given
to police.
Police responded to the home around 8:44 p.m. 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 that someone had dropped Clemmons off
at his aunt’s home, on East Superior Street.
Clemmons’ sister, Latanya Clemmons, said Sunday night she
was near her aunt’s house waiting to see what happens. She also said she and
her cousin, Cicely, were trying to call their aunt and Maurice in the house but
they were getting no answer.
Police told residents to stay inside and keep their doors
locked.
One Leschi resident couldn’t get back to his home Sunday
night. Bo Peck, 52, and his wife just moved from Montlake to a home on East
Superior Street this weekend, and he had gone back to get his last load from
his old house. When he tried to get back to his new house, he found police had
closed off all routes along Lake Washington Boulevard and Alder Street.
“Everything is blocked down there,” Peck said.
“My wife and daughter are alone down there, they’re a little freaked
out.”
Charles and Heidi Markham live on East Superior Street. They
arrived back in Seattle at about 1 a.m. Monday, returning from a trip to
British Columbia. But police stopped them several blocks from their home.
“They told us it’s blocked off and nobody can get in
there,” Charles Markham said. “They told us just to wait
awhile.”
Heidi Markham said: “It’s a nice neighborhood. That’s
why this is kind of strange.”
The couple has lived in the neighborhood for 42 years. They
said they weren’t worried, and that it seemed like police had the situation
under control.
The series of events leading up to the house 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, sheriff’s spokesman 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 has scheduled a 10 a.m.
news conference today to discuss the officers and the shooting.
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.
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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 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.
When the 911 calls started coming in, officers from
Lakewood, Tacoma and other jurisdictions raced to the area.
“I have never seen this many scramble to a particular
spot, ever,” said David Gabrielson, 27, who works as clerk at a gas
station near the coffee shop.
An apparent hoax came when a man called 911, claiming to be
the shooter. Police took the man into custody, but he was not linked to the
crime, Troyer said.
A second likely hoax came after a Tacoma man called his
girlfriend and some other people and falsely claimed responsibility for the
shooting, Troyer said. The man has since been arrested on suspicion of
obstructing a police investigation.
That hoax sparked the search of vehicles parked outside
Evergreen Self Storage, a facility near the shooting scene. The Pierce County
bomb squad was dispatched to the storage facility.
Authorities remained on edge all day. At one point, Troyer,
who was carrying an assault rifle, told members of the media, “This is
kind of a hot area, so you’re kind of on your own.”
Heavily armed police on Sunday surrounded the Tacoma home of
Clemmons’ wife, not far from the shooting scene. It didn’t appear anyone was
home. Later Sunday night they served a search warrant at the home.
Troyer said police found a GPS ankle bracelet during a
search of a house where Clemmons was believed to have been staying. Clemmons
was required to wear an ankle bracelet under terms of his recent release.
Troyer said if the gunman was shot, he could be traveling
some distance to get care. Troyer suggested the man may try to visit a medical
facility and claim he had suffered an accidental gunshot wound.
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.
