Hours after a suspected cop killer slipped through an overnight dragnet around his home in Seattle, police continue to search for Maurice Clemmons.
Chasing a steady stream of tips this morning, officers swarmed the University of Washington campus, descended on a neighborhood south of downtown and are now said to be on the hunt near a park north of Lake Union.
And as residents study his mugshot and monitor police scanners, they are posting tips and sharing updates on Twitter about an additional searches.
Meanwhile, a murder warrant has been issued for Clemmons, the man suspected of killing four Lakewood, Wash., police officers Sunday in a coffee shop. There is also a $125,000 reward for information leading to his capture, said Pierce County sheriff's spokesman Ed Troyer.
And police are searching for a green 1997 Mazda Millenia, with Washington license 208SSX, registered Clemmons' wife.
A heavily armed SWAT team stormed a Seattle home before dawn today where they thought they had cornered the suspect, only to find out that he was not in the house and still on the loose.
The discovery added new urgency to the manhunt for Clemmons as police canvassed the neighborhood with search dogs and hundreds of officers were deployed around the city for any sign of the suspect.
Troyer also said people who know Clemmons told investigators he had been shot in the torso in his bloody struggle with the officers.
"If he didn't get a ride out of there, he could still be in the area," Troyer said.
Later in the morning, 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 3 miles north of the residence, university police Cmdr. Jerome Solomon said. Police were checking the area, he said.
Clemmons has a long criminal history, including a long prison sentence commuted by former Arkansas Gov. Mike Huckabee nearly a decade ago, and a recent arrest for allegedly assaulting a police officer in Washington. By midday, conservative bloggers were referring to Clemmons as the former presidential candidate's "Willie Horton," a reference to a furloughed felon whose crime spree doomed the White House aspirations of Massachusetts Gov. Michael Dukakis.
Authorities allege Clemmons killed Sgt. Mark Renninger, 39, and officers Ronald Owens, 37, Tina Griswold, 40, and Greg Richards, 42, as they worked on their laptop computers at the beginning of their shifts.
The Pierce County sheriff's office has confirmed that investigators have recovered a handgun carried by the shooter in the coffee shop but investigators say they don't know if it's the weapon used in Sunday's shooting deaths of the Lakewood officers.
Investigators say they know of no reason for gunning down the officers, but court documents indicate Clemmons is delusional and mentally unstable.
"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 suburban Parkland, about 35 miles south of Seattle.
"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 bullets hit their targets."
Officer Richards' sister-in-law, Melanie Burwell, called the shooting "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.
Clemmons has an extensive violent criminal history from Arkansas. He was also recently charged in Washington state with assaulting a police officer, and second-degree rape of a child. Using a bail bondsman, he posted $150,000 — only $15,000 of his own money — and was released from jail last week.
Documents related to the pending charges in Washington state indicate a volatile personality. In one instance, he is accused of punching a sheriff's deputy in the face, The Seattle Times reported. In another, he is accused of gathering his wife and young relatives and forcing them to undress, according to a Pierce County sheriff's report.
"The whole time Clemmons kept saying things like trust him, the world is going to end soon, and that he was Jesus," the report said.
Troyer said investigators believe two of the officers were killed while sitting in the shop, and a third was shot dead after standing up. The fourth apparently "gave up a good fight."
"We believe there was a struggle, a commotion, a fight ... that he fought the guy all the way out the door," Troyer said.
In 1989, Clemmons, then 17, was convicted in Little Rock for aggravated robbery. He was paroled in 2000 after Huckabee commuted a 95-year prison sentence.
Huckabee, who was criticized during his run for the Republican presidential nomination in 2008 for granting many clemencies and commutations, cited Clemmons' youth. Clemmons later violated his parole, was returned to prison and released in 2004.
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."
It was the second deadly ambush of police in the Seattle area in recent weeks, but the two cases aren't related.
Authorities say a man killed a Seattle police officer on Halloween night and 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.
The officers killed Sunday had received no threats, Troyer said.
"We won't know if it's a copycat effect or what it was until we get the case solved," he said.