Police hunt ex-Arkansan in killing of 4

In Seattle officers’ deaths, pursuers go to 2nd home

— Swarms of law-enforcement officers continued their manhunt in and around Seattle on Monday for the Arkansas man charged with killing four Lakewood police officers in a coffee shop as their shifts began Sunday morning.

Officers surrounded a home in the Seattle suburb of Renton on Monday evening, the second time in two days police had circled a home in their search for Maurice Clemmons, 37. Police questioned residents thought to have aided the suspect since the Sunday morning shootings.

Police were certain that Clemmons was in a house Sunday night in Seattle’s Leschi neighborhood, but they found no one inside when they stormed it Monday morning.

Pierce County sheriff ’s spokesman Ed Troyer said it was possible that Clemmons was simply hiding somewhere near his home in Tacoma, 30 miles south of Seattle.

“If he didn’t get a ride out of there, he could still be in the area,” Troyer said.

At one point Monday afternoon, police were looking for a green 1997 Mazda registered to Clemmons’ wife, thinking it might be headed for Arkansas. The search ended when police realized the couple had sold the car several months earlier.

Police know that Clemmons was wounded in the torso because they have detained other people - Troyer wouldn’t say how many - who helped Clemmons after the shootings.

The dead Lakewood officers were Sgt. Mark Renninger, 39, and officers Ronald Owens, 37, Tina Griswold, 40, and Greg Richards, 42. They were seated in front of their laptop computers at a table inside a coffeehouse in the neighboring Tacoma suburb of Parkland when the gunman started shooting.

It was the deadliest shooting of police officers in Washington state history.

Each officer joined the Lakewood force when the department opened five years ago. The coffee shop, in a strip mall across the street from McChord Air Force Base, is favored by officers from several nearby jurisdictions.

Richards’ sister-in-law, Melanie Burwell, called theshooting “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.”

Pierce County sheriff ’s spokesman Lt. Dave McDonald confirmed Monday that investigators searching the coffee shop had recovered a handgun carried by the gunman, but he did not know if it was the weapon used in Sunday’s shootings. McDonald would not say what type of weapon it is.

Troyer said authorities obtained a warrant early Monday charging Clemmons with four counts of first-degree murder. There is a $125,000 reward for information leading to his capture.

As the hunt for Clemmons continued, documents in Washington state and in Arkansas outlined his troubled past.

Born in the Lee County seat of Marianna, Clemmons moved to Little Rock and Hall High School after living for a time in Seattle, records show. Little Rock police arrested him after a string of crimes in 1989 - aggravated robbery, burglary, theft of property, possession of a firearm at a school - that together earned him 108 years in prison with his earliest possible parole date in 2015.

Clemmons was 17.

In documents filed a decade later as he sought clemency from then Gov. Mike Huckabee, Clemmons wrote that he didn’t know anyone when he moved to a “crime-ridden neighborhood” in Little Rock and fell in with the wrong people. He was just a “misguided fool,” he wrote the governor, who latched on to the first friends he could find.

But even then, he found himself getting in still more trouble. Before a pretrial hearing in January 1990 a bailiff caught him with a 10-inch metal pipe ripped out of a holding cell. At one of his sentencing hearings a month later, Clemmons chucked a heavy padlock at the bailiff, hitting his own mother instead.

Huckabee granted Clemmons’ request, commuting his sentence in 2000 and making him immediately available for parole. Clemmons went back to prison in 2001 on a 10-year sentence for a Ouachita County robbery. He was paroled in 2004, though his parole was not set to expire until 2021, Arkansas Department of Correction spokesman Dina Tyler said.

A note in Clemmons’ 2004 parole records mentions that he felt he was not yet ready to leave prison when Huckabee granted the commutation in 2000. This time, his fiancee, Nicole Cheryleen Smith, would be a good influence, according to the note, and “he will try to do the right thing.”

“Doesn’t want to die in prison,” the file notes.

Clemmons and Smith married June 2, 2004, with Pulaski County Circuit Judge Marion Humphrey officiating. Humphrey supported Huckabee’s commutation of Clemmons’ sentence, saying the punishment had been too harsh.

Clemmons and his wife moved back to Washington state - she was born in neighboring Oregon - and he opened a landscaping and pressure-washing business in Tacoma, records show.

He punched a sheriff ’s deputy in the face last spring, records show. And earlier this year, Clemmons began making his own family uncomfortable.

In May, Clemmons’ sister, Latanya, told investigators her brother called family members all over the country and told them they needed to come to his house at a specific date and time because the Secret Service planned to arrested him “because he had written a letter to the President,” according to a Pierce County, Wash., sheriff’s office report.

“She stated his behavior has become unpredictable and erratic,” the report states. “She suspects he is having a mental breakdown.”

He woke up his wife at 3 a.m. for sex and kept repeating “trust me,” according to another Pierce County report filed that month. He brought two children living with them into their bedroom and told them he was “Jesus Christ in the flesh” and the world wouldend soon, according to the report.

Clemmons told them all to get naked and said they needed to all be naked together for five minutes every Sunday, according to the report. Clemmons told them “how beautiful it was that they were sharing the moment,” according to the report.

A 12-year-old girl living in the house, the child of a prostitute, accused Clemmons of molesting her.

Clemmons was arrested July 2 on a charge of second-degree rape of a child. Washington Child Protective Services substantiated the girl’s claim in October. He remained in the Pierce County jail on seven more felony charges until last week, paying $15,000 to Jail Sucks Bail Bonds of Chehalis, Wash., for a $150,000 bond to secure his release.

After his arrest, Washington state authorities checked Clemmons’ criminal background and learned that Arkansas officials had placed a “hold” on Clemmons because he was on parole and had not been reporting to his parole officer. However, that warrant was rescinded by Arkansas officials because Clemmons was in custody.

Prosecutors concerned about Clemmons’ mental health requested an evaluation at Western State Hospital. On Nov. 6, a psychologist concluded Clemmons was competent to stand trial.

“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 Parkland.

“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 bulletshit their targets.”

Troyer said it was a premeditated attack, telling The (Tacoma, Wash.) News-Tribune that Clemmons “made comments the night before to people that he was going to shoot police and watch the news.”

Police thought they had him cornered early Monday after arriving at the house in Seattle’s Leschi neighborhood.

SWAT teams and police negotiators had surrounded the house at East Yesler Way and 32nd Avenue South. A woman who was leaving the home was stopped by officers and told them Clemmons was on the property and bleeding.

Then came a series of flash-bangs, distraction devices which can temporarily blind a suspect. Discharges of what appeared to be tear gas followed.

The woman told police that someone had dropped Clemmons off at his aunt’s home, on East Superior Street.

Latanya Clemmons said Sunday night that 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 were getting no answer.

But when police went inside, he was not there. Police said there was evidence Clemmons had been there, but refused to describe it.

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. Police already arrested a man in the Brenton case.

Information for this report was contributed by staff members of the Seattle Times; by Manuel Valdes, Gene Johnson, Rachel La Corte, George Tibbits, Jill Zeman Bleed of the Associated Press; and Jacob Quinn Sanders of the Arkansas Democrat-Gazette.

Front Section, Pages 1 on 12/01/2009

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