Suspect in officer killings eludes law

SEATTLE (AP) — Using search dogs and going door to door, hundreds of police intensified the hunt Monday for the man wanted in the coffeehouse killings of four officers after a SWAT team came up empty-handed in a raid on a house where he was thought to be holed up.

The realization that the suspect had not been cornered after all further rattled people in the Seattle area, many of them unnerved by the thought of a mentally unstable killer in their midst.

Police canvassed the neighborhood around the Seattle house and fanned out across the city, looking for any sign of Maurice Clemmons, 37. 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 a 95-year prison sentence. He was released in 2000 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 deputy sheriff 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 would not say who lived at the house or whether it was someone Clemmons knew.

It was not clear whether he slipped past police, left before they arrived, or was never in the house at all, but Seattle police spokesman Jeff Kappel said there was evidence Clemmons at one point was on the property. He would not elaborate.

Police spent 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 about three miles from the home.

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.

“He was very versed with the weapon,” Troyer said earlier. “This wasn’t something where the windows were shot up and there bullets sprayed around the place. The bullets hit their targets.”

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, dating back to his teenage burglary and robbery spree. He was charged in Washington state earlier this year with assaulting a police officer and raping a child.