Tag Archives: manhunt

Manhunt prompts evacuation of Arizona wildlife park

By David Schwartz

PHOENIX (Reuters) – A manhunt for an armed fugitive that triggered the evacuation of a popular wildlife park south of the Grand Canyon ended peacefully on Monday with the arrest of the suspect, police in Arizona said.

The accused gunman was believed to have possibly fled into the Bearizona Wildlife Park after a confrontation with police that began as a traffic stop and turned into a high-speed chase, a spokesman for the Yavapai County Sheriff’s Office said.

One passenger was thrown from the car during a getaway attempt, a second man was taken into custody when the car crashed, but a third fled on foot, firing at least one shot toward deputies from a handgun, according to the spokesman, Dwight D’Evelyn.

The suspect disappeared near the Bearizona park, a 168-acre private attraction nestled within the Kaibab National Forest at the edge of Williams, a gateway town to Grand Canyon National Park about 60 miles away.

As a precaution, Bearizona was closed and evacuated, with police escorting all 200 visitors and about 20 staff safely from the facility, spokeswoman Jocelyn Monteverde said. Public schools in Williams were also placed on lockdown during the manhunt, police said.

At about 6 p.m. local time, nearly six hours after the search began, police located the suspect, identified as John Freeman, in a highway culvert near Bearizona, and he was arrested without incident, D’Evelyn said.

Police said Freeman was wanted on a warrant from nearby Kingman, Arizona, but no further information about him was immediately released.

Bearizona is visited by some 300,000 tourists a year, many on their way to or from the Grand Canyon, located about an hour’s drive to the north, Monteverde said. It features a collection of bears, wolves, bison and other wildlife, some roaming a drive-through exhibit and others displayed in smaller zoo-like enclosures.

(Reporting by David Schwartz in Phoenix; Additional reporting and writing by Steve Gorman in Los Angeles; Editing by Simon Cameron-Moore)

Florida police officer fatally shot, deputy dies in manhunt

Police Officer Master Sgt. Debra Clayton

By Jon Herskovitz

(Reuters) – A man wanted for killing his former girlfriend fatally shot an Orlando, Florida, police officer on Monday, authorities said, prompting a manhunt and a reward of up to $60,000.

Helicopters buzzed the skies while scores of police shut streets and went door to door in their search for the suspect, identified as Markeith Loyd, 41. He was considered armed and dangerous.

An Orange County sheriff’s deputy in the manhunt for Loyd was killed in a collision between his motorcycle and a van, police said. The driver of the van was a 78-year-old man, according to local TV station News 6.

“We are bringing this dirt bag to justice,” Orlando Police Chief John Mina said of Loyd at a news conference, adding that federal agents had joined the search.

“We will track him down to the ends of the earth,” he told a later news conference.

Authorities said the slain officer, Master Sergeant Debra Clayton, was shot while responding to a sighting of the suspect at a local Walmart. Loyd fired at her and she returned fire, Mina said, adding that he did not believe Loyd was hit.

Loyd fled the shooting scene outside the store in a car and fired at a deputy who tried to the stop him, authorities said. The deputy was unharmed.

Orlando Mayor Buddy Dyer declared a day of mourning after the officers’ deaths.

Authorities have been trying to capture Loyd in connection with the December murder of a pregnant woman who was once his girlfriend, the Orange County Sheriff’s office said.

Clayton, a decorated 17-year veteran of the Orlando Police Department, died at a hospital, the department said. Photos posted on social media showed her at community events, working to improve relations between police and residents.

“The Orlando Police Department family is heartbroken today,” the department said on Twitter, showing a video of officers escorting a U.S. flag-draped gurney.

Local media said Clayton was one of the first officers to respond to the Pulse gay nightclub massacre in Orlando last June, the deadliest shooting rampage in modern U.S. history, where a gunman killed 49 people.

Deputy First Class Norman Lewis, an 11-year-veteran, was killed in the manhunt for Loyd, the Orange County Sheriff’s office said. Lewis, 35, once played football for the University of Central Florida. it said.

“Norm will be deeply missed. Rest in peace, gentle giant,” it said on its Facebook page.

(Reporting by Jon Herskovitz; Editing by Dan Grebler and Andrew Hay)

Turkey says Istanbul attacker’s identity established, manhunt goes on

Police special forces patrol outisde the Reina nightclub which was attacked by a gunman, in Istanbul, Turkey

By Nick Tattersall and Daren Butler

ISTANBUL (Reuters) – Turkey has established the identity of the gunman who killed 39 people in an Istanbul nightclub on New Year’s Day, its foreign minister said on Wednesday, as police rounded up more suspected accomplices.

In an interview with the state-run Anadolu news agency, Mevlut Cavusoglu gave no further details about the gunman, whom Turkish officials have not named.

The attacker shot his way into the exclusive Reina nightclub on Sunday then opened fire with an automatic rifle, reloading his weapon half a dozen times and shooting the wounded as they lay on the ground. Turks as well as visitors from several Arab nations, India and Canada were among the dead.

Islamic State has claimed responsibility for the attack, saying it was revenge for Turkish military involvement in Syria.

Turkish media reports have said the attacker is believed to be an ethnic Uighur, possibly from Kyrgyzstan.

The shooting in Istanbul’s Ortakoy neighbourhood, an upscale district on the Bosphorus shore, came after a year in which NATO member Turkey was shaken by a series of attacks by radical Islamist and Kurdish militants and by a failed coup.

President Tayyip Erdogan said the attack, which targeted a club popular with local celebrities and moneyed foreigners, was being exploited to try to divide the largely Sunni Muslim nation and that the state never meddled in how people lived.

“There is no point trying to blame the Ortakoy attack on differences in lifestyles,” he said in a speech to local administrators at the presidential palace in Ankara.

“Nobody’s lifestyle is under systematic threat in Turkey. We will never allow this,” he said in comments broadcast live. It was his first public speech since the shooting.

Turkey’s Religious Affairs Directorate, which condemned the attack in its immediate aftermath, had issued a statement in December saying celebrating the New Year did not fit with Muslim values, triggering criticism from some parts of Turkish society.

Such calls have made many secular Turks suspicious of the Islamist background of Erdogan and the ruling AK Party, seeing them as bent on eroding the secular principles of the modern republic founded in 1923 by Mustafa Kemal Ataturk after the fall of the Ottoman empire. Erdogan rejects such suggestions.

MORE DETENTIONS

The attacker appeared to have been well versed in guerrilla warfare and may have trained in Syria, a security source and a newspaper report said on Tuesday.

The Haberturk newspaper said police investigations revealed that the gunman had entered Turkey from Syria and went to the central city of Konya in November, travelling with his wife and two children so as not to attract attention.

On Wednesday, police in the western city of Izmir detained 27 people who had travelled from Konya, citing suspicion of links to the attack, the Dogan news agency said.

They included women and children. Video footage showed some of them being brought out of an apartment building to waiting vehicles.

Seven Uighur Turks were also detained at a restaurant in the working-class Istanbul neighbourhood of Zeytinburnu, where the gunman was thought to have gone by taxi after the attack and asked to borrow money to pay the driver, Haberturk said.

The newspaper said raids had been carried out on 50 addresses in the district, where many Uzbeks, Kyrgyz, Kazakhs and Uighurs live, and 14 people detained in total.

(Additional reporting by Orhan Coskun, Tulay Karadeniz and Tuvan Gumrukcu in Ankara; Writing by Nick Tattersall; Editing by Tom Heneghan)

Fingerprints of Tunisian suspect in Berlin attack found on truck door

Flowers are seen near the scene where a truck ploughed into a crowded Christmas market in the German capital last night in Berlin, Germany,

By Michelle Martin and Michael Nienaber

BERLIN (Reuters) – Investigators found fingerprints of a Tunisian suspect in the Berlin Christmas market attack on the door of the truck that ploughed through the crowds, killing 12, German media said on Thursday, as a nationwide manhunt for the migrant was underway.

Islamic State has claimed responsibility for the attack in which a truck smashed through wooden huts selling gifts, mulled wine and sausages on Monday evening. It was the deadliest attack on German soil since 1980.

The media did not name their source for the report about 24-year-old Anis Amri’s fingerprints and police declined to comment.

Anis Amri in a combination image released by German police.

Anis Amri in a combination image released by German police. REUTERS/BKA

The Berlin attack has raised concerns across Europe in the approach to Christmas, with markets in France, target of a series of militant attacks over the last year, tightening security with concrete barriers. Troops were also being posted at churches.

The Berlin market reopened on Thursday ringed by concrete bollards.

Police in the western German city of Dortmund arrested four people who had been in contact with Amri, media reports said, but a spokesman for the chief federal prosecutor denied that and said he would give no further details on the operation.

Bild newspaper cited an anti-terrorism investigator as saying it was clear in spring that Amri was looking for accomplices for an attack and was interested in weapons.

ASYLUM REQUEST REJECTED

The report said preliminary proceedings had been opened against Amri in March based on information he was planning a robbery to get money to buy automatic weapons and “possibly carry out an attack”.

In mid-2016, he spoke to two IS fighters and Tunisian authorities listened in on their conversation before informing German authorities. Amri also offered himself as a suicide attacker on known Islamist chat sites, Bild said.

Police started looking for Amri after finding an identity document under the driver’s seat of the truck used in the attack. Authorities have stressed he is just a suspect and not necessarily the driver of the truck.

Broadcaster rbb said the perpetrator lost both his wallet and mobile phone while running away from the attack site.

On Wednesday, Ralf Jaeger, interior minister of the western state of North Rhine-Westphalia (NRW), said the Tunisian appeared to have arrived in Germany in July 2015 and his asylum application had been rejected in June 2016.

Klaus Bouillon, head of the group of interior ministers from Germany’s federal states, said Islamists often left identity documents at attack sites – as was the case in Paris attacks – to steer public opinion against refugees.

German Chancellor Angela Merkel has faced calls to tighten asylum procedures since the attack. Armin Schuster of her Christian Democrats, told broadcaster NDR: “We need to send the signal: Only set off for Germany if you have a reason for asylum.”

The Italian Foreign Ministry said an Italian woman named Fabrizia Di Lorenzo was among the victims and the Israeli Foreign Ministry said an Israeli woman called Dalia Elyakim had been identified among the dead.

(Reporting by Michelle Martin, Michael Nienaber, Thorsten Severin, Victoria Bryan in Berlin and Jeffrey Heller in Jerusalem; additional reporting by Sabine Siebold in Mazar-i-Sharif,Afghanistan; editing by Ralph Boulton)

German police hunt Tunisian asylum-seeker over Christmas market attack

Candles burn at a Christmas market at Breitscheidplatz in Berlin, Germany, December 20, 2016, to commemorate the 12 victims of a truck that ploughed into the crowded market.

By Paul Carrel and Matthias Inverardi

BERLIN/DUESSELDORF (Reuters) – German police are looking for an asylum-seeker from Tunisia after finding an identity document under the driver’s seat of a truck that plowed into a Berlin Christmas market and killed 12 people, officials and security sources said on Wednesday.

Ralf Jaeger, interior minister of the western state of North Rhine-Westphalia (NRW), said the man appeared to have arrived in Germany in July 2015 and his asylum application had been rejected.

He seemed to have used different names and had been identified by security agencies as being in contact with an Islamist network. The man had mainly lived in Berlin since February, but was recently in NRW, Jaeger said.

The man had been considered a potential threat by security authorities since November. After being turned down for asylum, he should have been deported but could not be returned to Tunisia because his documents were missing, added Jaeger.

The new details added to a growing list of questions about whether security authorities missed opportunities to prevent the attack, in which a 25-tonne truck mowed down a crowd of shoppers and smashed through wooden huts selling gifts, mulled wine and sausages. It was the deadliest attack on German soil since 1980.

Christmas markets have been a known potential target for Islamist militants since at least 2000, when authorities thwarted a plot to attack one in Strasbourg, France. And the modus operandi in Berlin was identical to that of a Bastille Day attack in the French city of Nice in July, when a Tunisian-born man rammed a lorry through a seaside crowd and killed 86 people.

Security sources said the ID found by the Berlin investigators was in the name of Anis A., born in the southern Tunisian city of Tataouine in 1992. By convention, suspects in Germany are identified by the first name and initial.

A spokesperson for Tunisia’s foreign ministry said it was trying to verify that information.

German Interior Minister Thomas de Maiziere said a Europe-wide manhunt for the suspect had been underway since midnight.

The Rheinische Post newspaper said police had begun searching a shelter for migrants in western Germany where the man was believed to have lived.

SYMBOLIC TARGET

The pre-Christmas carnage at a symbolic Berlin site – under the ruined spire of a church bombed in World War Two – has shocked Germans and prompted security reviews across Europe, already on high alert after attacks this year in Belgium and France.

The possible – though unproven – involvement of a migrant or refugee has revived a bitter debate about security and immigration, with Chancellor Angela Merkel facing calls to clamp down after allowing more than a million newcomers into Germany in the past two years.

Merkel, who will run for a fourth term next year, has said it would be particularly repugnant if a refugee seeking protection in Germany was the perpetrator.

Police initially arrested a Pakistani asylum-seeker near the scene, but released him without charge on Tuesday. Authorities have warned that the attacker is on the run and may be armed. It is not clear if the perpetrator was acting alone or with others.

The Polish driver of the hijacked truck was found shot dead in the cabin of the vehicle. Bild newspaper reported that he was alive until the attack took place.

It quoted an investigator as saying there must have been a struggle with the attacker, who may have been injured.

ISLAMIC STATE CLAIM

Islamic State has claimed responsibility, as it did for the Nice attack.

The Passauer Neue Presse newspaper quoted the head of the group of interior ministers from Germany’s 16 federal states, Klaus Bouillon, as saying tougher security measures were needed.

“We want to raise the police presence and strengthen the protection of Christmas markets. We will have more patrols. Officers will have machine guns. We want to make access to markets more difficult, with vehicles parked across them,” Bouillon told the paper.

Some politicians have blamed Merkel’s open-door migrant policy for making such attacks more likely. The anti-immigrant Alternative for Germany (AfD), which has gained support in the last two years as the chancellor’s popularity has waned, said on Tuesday that Germany is no longer safe.

Bavarian Interior Minister Joachim Herrmann told German radio there was a higher risk of Islamist attacks because of the influx of migrants in the past two years, many of whom have fled conflicts in countries such as Syria, Iraq and Afghanistan.

The task of tracking the suspects and the movements of the truck may be complicated by the relative scarcity of security cameras in public places in Germany, compared with similar countries such as Britain.

The German cabinet on Wednesday approved a draft law to broaden video surveillance in public and commercial areas, a move agreed by political parties last month after a spate of violent attacks and sexual assaults on women.

State surveillance is a sensitive issue in Germany because of extensive snooping by the Stasi secret police in Communist East Germany and by the Gestapo in the Nazi era.

(Additional reporting by Madeline Chambers in Berlin and Mohamed Argouby in Tunis; Writing by Mark Trevelyan; Editing by Gareth Jones)

Police search for gunman who killed five at Washington state mall

(Note: paragraph six contains language that may be offensive to readers)

By Matt Mills McKnight

BURLINGTON, Wash. (Reuters) – A manhunt was underway on Saturday in northwest Washington state for a gunman who opened fire with a rifle in a shopping mall and killed five people before disappearing under the cover of darkness, authorities said.

The suspect entered the Cascade Mall in Burlington, around 65 miles (105 km) north of Seattle, and began shooting at about 7 p.m. local time on Friday in the cosmetics section of a Macy’s department store, police said.

The unidentified suspect, who police described on Twitter as an Hispanic male, initially walked into the shopping center without the rifle but surveillance video later caught him brandishing the weapon, said Lt. Chris Cammock of the Mount Vernon Police Department at briefing on Saturday.

The rifle was later recovered at the mall, said Cammock, who is commander of the Skagit County Multi-Agency Response Team.

Four women were killed in the rampage, which police believe was carried out by a lone gunman. Later a man who was seriously wounded in the shooting died at a local hospital. None of the victims were identified.

Steve Sexton, the mayor of Burlington, described the shooting as a “senseless act.”

“It was the world knocking on our doorstep and it came to our little community here,” he said before acknowledging the response by law enforcement. “I know now our support goes with them to bring this son of a bitch to justice.”

Authorities offered no information about a possible motive for the attack, which followed a series of violent outbursts at shopping centers across the United States, including the stabbing of nine people at a Minnesota center last weekend.

“We have no indication that we have a terrorism act,” said Michael Knutson, assistant special agent in charge of the Federal Bureau of Investigation’s Seattle office. “I can’t discount that, but I can’t conclude it either.”

After the shooting, police and rescue workers worked their way through the mall, clearing stores and evacuating shoppers, some of whom locked themselves in dressing rooms. The mall remained closed on Saturday as investigators sifted for evidence and attempted to recreate the crime scene.

Cammock said police had no clues about the identity or whereabouts of the suspect, and asked the public for help in tracking him down.

Authorities released a grainy photo of the suspect taken by a surveillance camera. It shows a young male in his late teens or mid-20s with short dark hair, dressed in dark shorts and T-shirt and carrying a rifle.

Local authorities searched through the night for the gunman and warned residents to remain indoors, though later said the area was safe.

The suspect was last seen walking toward an interstate highway that runs past the mall, which is 45 miles south of the Canadian province of British Columbia.

When asked why police had described the suspect as Hispanic, Cammock told reporters he believed those who saw the photo made the statement based on his dark complexion.

The shooting comes less than a week after a man stabbed nine people at a mall in the central Minnesota city of St. Cloud before being shot dead by an off-duty police officer. The FBI is investigating that attack as a potential act of terrorism.

(Reporting by Brendan O’Brien in Milwaukee and Jonathan Allen in New York; Writing by Frank McGurty; Editing by Meredith Mazzilli)