US police were last night locked in a tense standoff with a suspect in the slaying of four officers gunned down in a suburban coffee shop. The suspect, Maurice Clemmons, 37, was wounded and possibly dead, police said.
Negotiators were trying to communicate with him using loudspeakers and explosions to try to prod him from hiding in a Seattle house. At one point, gunshots rang through the neighborhood, 48 kilometers from the original crime scene.
"We have determined that in fact he has been shot," said Ed Troyer, a spokesman for the Pierce County Sheriff in Washington state. "He may be deceased from his gunshot wound."
Authorities had speculated that the gunman might have been wounded at the coffee shop by one of his victims. Troyer said interviews with other people detained confirmed that theory.
Police surrounded the house and a negotiator used a loudspeaker to call him out by name, saying: "Mr Clemmons, I'd like to get you out of there safely. I can tell you this, we are not going away."
Shortly after, police began using sirens outside the house, and there were several loud bangs before the negotiator resumed speaking, saying: "This is one of the toughest decisions you'll make in your life, but you need to man up."
Earlier, Troyer said the victims were sitting at a table in the cafe before their shift on Sunday when a lone gunman entered and started shooting at around 8.15am. The gunman "blatantly went in and opened fire on four police officers, killing a
ll four of them," said Troyer, following the shooting near McChord Air Force base in Tacoma, south of Seattle.Slain were Sergeant Mark Renninger, 39, Ronald Owens, 37, Tina Griswold, 40, and Greg Richards, 42. They were all married with children, police said, and wearing uniforms and bulletproof vests when they were shot. The officers, from nearby Lakewood Police Department, had been specifically targeted, with no one else shot at in the Forza coffee shop. "This was more of an execution - walk in with the specific mindset to shoot police officers."
Troyer added: "He walked in with a handgun, opened fire multiple times and fled the scene."
Clemmons reportedly has a long criminal history. He had been in jail in Pierce County for several months until recently pending a charge of second-degree rape of a child.
According to the Seattle Times, Clemmons served only part of a 35-year prison sentence in Arkansas before it was commuted in 2000 by then governor Mike Huckabee, who sought the Republican presidential nomination in 2008.
Local media said it was the worst single loss of life involving law enforcement officers in state history.
ASSOCIATED PRESS, AGENCE FRANCE-PRESSE
