SEATTLE — A lone officer on patrol in the middle of the night Tuesday spotted a stolen car, its hood up and engine running, and pulled over to check it out. As the patrolman sat in his cruiser, he sensed movement, and a burly man with a large mole on his cheek came up from behind.
The officer turned and instantly recognized the most-wanted man in the Pacific Northwest — the ex-con accused of gunning down four cops at a suburban Tacoma coffee shop. Moments later, Maurice Clemmons, 37, lay dead in the street, shot by the patrolman after Clemmons made a move for a gun he had taken from one of the slain officers, police said.
Clemmons’ death brought an end to two days of fear across the Seattle-Tacoma area.
“Good thing he wasn’t able to get the gun out here or we might have had a different ending to this whole thing,” Pierce County sheriff’s spokesman Ed Troyer said.
Clemmons eluded capture thanks to family and friends who provided him with shelter, cellphones, cash and first aid for the severe belly wound he suffered when one of the dying officers in Sunday’s coffee-shop rampage got off a shot, police said. Six to seven of those associates were being arrested Tuesday.
Among them were an accomplice who drove the getaway truck after the rampage and Clemmons’ sister, who bandaged him up and gave him a lift to a house in Seattle, police said.
Clemmons had a violent, erratic past, and authorities in Washington state and Arkansas — where then-Gov. Mike Huckabee in 2000 commuted his 108-year prison sentence for armed robbery and other offenses — are facing tough questions about why he was out on the street.
The Seattle officer who killed Clemmons, Benjamin L. Kelly, 39, will be placed on leave, which is standard procedure after a shooting.
