Manhunt For WA. Police Serial Killer (Maurice Clemmons) Continues...Family Aiding Suspect

Manhunt for alleged cop killer continues. Police are still in pursuit of Maurice Clemmons, a former inmate suspected of gunning down four Washington state police officers Sunday. NBC's George Lewis reports.

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WA. Police Chief: "We will all miss them very much". Lakewood Police Chief Bret Farrar, flanked by city officials and numerous police officers, is emotional as he speaks to reporters about the shooting deaths of four of his officers.

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Washington State Police: Family helping cop-killings Suspect



Authorities believe the man sought in the slaying of four police officers is still alive and has been aided by a network of friends and family, a police spokesman said Monday night. Officers believe Maurice Clemmons was shot in the abdomen during the attack on the officers at a Parkland coffee shop, and had speculated he might have died.

But Ed Troyer, a spokesman for the Pierce County Sheriff, said investigators have questioned several people who had provided assistance to Clemmons since the Sunday morning shootings.

"We think his network of people helping him is running out." Troyer said. "He's probably on his own."

Police are also certain Clemmons, 37, was in a Seattle house on Sunday night, but was able to flee before police could contain the area. Police staked out the house overnight before SWAT team members determined early Monday that Clemmons wasn't there.

Clemmons has had access to handguns, rifles and shotguns, Troyer said.

"It's unfortunate he's been a step or two ahead of us."


Large Reward Offered

Monday morning's realization that the suspect had not been cornered after all prompted police to fan out across the city, looking for any sign of Clemmons. Authorities posted a $125,000 reward for information leading to his arrest in the Sunday morning shooting rampage.

The manhunt came as authorities in two states took heat for the fact that Clemmons was allowed to walk the streets despite a teenage crime spree in Arkansas that landed him an 108-year prison sentence. He was released early after then-Gov. Mike Huckabee commuted his sentence.

"This guy should have never been on the street," said Brian D. Wurts, president of the police union in Lakewood, where all four slain officers worked. "Our elected officials need to find out why these people are out."

Police said they are not sure what prompted Clemmons to assassinate the officers as they worked on their laptop computers at the beginning of their shifts. He was described as increasingly erratic in the past few months and had been arrested earlier this year on charges that he punched a sheriff's deputy in the face.

Sheriff's spokesman Ed Troyer told the Tacoma News-Tribune that Clemmons indicated the night before the shooting "that he was going to shoot police and watch the news."

Authorities said the gunman singled out the officers and spared employees and other customers at the coffee shop in a suburb about 35 miles south of Seattle. He then fled, but not before he was apparently shot in the torso by one of the dying officers.

Police later learned he may have been holed up at the house in Seattle. After an all-night siege in which they tried to get him out using loudspeakers, explosions and a robot sent into the house, a SWAT team stormed the place and discovered he was not there.

Police spent the rest of the day frantically chasing leads, visiting hundreds of locations as they followed up on tips, at one point cordoning off a park where people thought they saw Clemmons. They also alerted hospitals to be on the lookout for a man seeking treatment for gunshot wounds.

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.

Investigators also examined the coffee shop for clues. Sheriff's spokesman Lt. Dave McDonald said that authorities found a handgun carried by the killer, along with a pickup truck belonging to the suspect with blood stains inside.

Killed were Sgt. Mark Renninger, 39, and Officers Ronald Owens, 37, Tina Griswold, 40, and Greg Richards, 42.

Clemmons has an extensive violent criminal history from Arkansas.

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."

In seeking leniency from Huckabee, Clemmons wrote the parole board that he was a "misguided fool" when he committed the crimes and "learned through the school of hard knocks to appreciate and respect the rights of others."

Huckabee cited Clemmons' youth in granting the request. But Clemmons quickly reverted to his criminal past, violated his parole and was returned to prison. He was released again in 2004.

Clemmons was charged in Washington state earlier this year with assaulting a police officer and raping a child, and investigators in the sex case said he was motivated by visions that he was Jesus Christ and that the world was on the verge of the apocalypse. But he was released from jail after posting bail with the assistance of Jail Sucks Bail Bonds.


The world is going to end soon

Documents related to those charges indicate a volatile personality. In one instance, he is accused of punching a sheriff's deputy in the face. In another, he is accused of gathering his wife and young relatives and forcing them to undress.

"The whole time Clemmons kept saying things like trust him, the world is going to end soon, and that he was Jesus," a Pierce County sheriff's report said.

Neighbors said Clemmons had surveillance cameras installed along the bushes in front of his house, and had mostly kept his blinds shut since he was accused of throwing rocks through the windows of his neighbors' cars and houses earlier this year.

Neighbor Ken Dietiker said he initially thought Clemmons' cameras were there to prevent crime. "But now I'm starting to think he's just paranoid," he said.

Dietiker said he was frustrated to learn about Clemmons' record and releases from custody.

"There were all these indicators. Who didn't see them?" he asked. "That's what I want to know."

There was no indication of any connection between Sunday's killings and the Halloween night shooting of a Seattle Police Officer as he sat in his patrol car.

Authorities say the man charged with that shooting 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.



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Sources: MSNBC, Google Maps

4 Washington State Police Officers Shot & Killed In A Coffee Shop!

(Seattle Times) Four police officers shot dead at coffee shop near Parkland



The Pierce County Sheriff’s Department has reported that four police officers have been shot dead in an ambush at the Forza Coffee shop at 11401 on South Steele Street near Parkland Sunday morning.

Pierce County Sheriff's spokesman Ed Troyer could not say what agency the officers were from.

The officers were sitting in the coffee shop with their computers out when the shooter came in. The officers were targeted, and it was not a robbery, investigators believe.

Pierce County deputies are working at the scene with Tacoma Police, Lakewood Police and the Washington State Patrol.

"It looks like a flat-out ambush," Troyer said. "Some one came in and opened fire.

The baristas who were inside the shop are "stunned and shocked, traumatized," Troyer said.

A $10,000 reward has been offered for information in the killings. The amount is expected rise, Troyer said.

"The first one to call with information gets it," he said.

Dave Gabrielson, a clerk at the Foot Mart at 112th and Steel Street South, about a block away from the coffee shop, arrived at work about 7:45 a.m. All was quiet then and he opened the store as usual at 8 a.m.

Then about 30 minutes later, Gabrielson said, "All of a sudden a million cops were zooming up and down the road."

He said he saw officers bring a police dog into the Willow Park Apartments, where he has lived after recently moving to the area.




(MSNBC) 4 police officers killed in Wash. coffee shop



Four police officers were shot and killed Sunday morning as they sat in a coffee shop Sunday morning in what sheriff's officials described as an "ambush."

The officers were in the cafe at a strip mall in the Tacoma suburb of Lakewood with their laptop computers, preparing for their day shifts, when one or two gunmen walked in and opened fire, Pierce County Sheriff's spokesman Ed Troyer said.

"This was a targeted, selected ambush," Troyer said, adding that customers and baristas were in the Forza Coffee shop at the time but no one else was shot at or injured.

Authorities were searching for the gunmen, and nearby McChord Air Force Base was put on alert.

A $10,000 reward was being offered for information leading to those responsible.

Brad Carpenter, the founder of Forza Coffee, told NBC News that all his employees were accounted for. A retired police officer himself, Carpenter started Forza in 2002 and now has 21 stores, primarily in the Tacoma area.



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Sources: Seattle Times, MSNBC, Google Maps