4 Cops Killed in Ambush Near McChord AFB [Update]

Police surround Seattle home where person of interest in police shooting may be hiding

(Seattle Times) – A SWAT team and police negotiators have surrounded a home in Seattle’s Leschi neighborhood where the man sought for questioning in the Lakewood police shooting may be hiding.

Police responded to the home at East Yesler Way and 32nd Avenue South around 8:44 p.m. A woman who was leaving the home was stopped by officers and told them Maurice Clemmons was on the property and bleeding, according to a law enforcement source.

Police officers shot and killed in ‘ambush’

PARKLAND, Wash. – Four police officers were shot and killed Sunday morning in what authorities called a targeted ambush at a coffee shop.

Pierce County Sheriff’s spokesman Ed Troyer says that the officers were in a coffee shop near 116th Street and Steele Street on the east side of the Air Force base at about 8:30 a.m.

Police are searching for a male suspect and interviewing witnesses. Forza Coffee is near McChord Air Force Base in Tacoma.

Troyer says the officers were preparing for their shift when a suspect or suspects “walked in with a handgun, opened fire multiple times and then fled the scene,” said Troyer.

Troyer called it an “ambush.”

Troyer said the suspect is a black male, 5-foot-7 and 5-foot-10, 20s to 30s, scruffy appearance, wearing a black coat and blue jeans.

Last month, Seattle police officer Timothy Brenton was shot and killed Halloween night as he was sitting in a cruiser with trainee Britt Sweeney. Sweeney was grazed in the neck.

Christopher Monfort, 41, of suburban Tukwila, was charged in the shooting. Days after the shooting, Seattle detectives attempted to question Monfort at his residence. Police say that Monfort then ran from the detectives and tried to use a gun. The detective shot him.

Authorities also linked Monfort to the October firebombing of four police vehicles, with prosecutors saying Monfort waged a “one-man war” against law enforcement. Monfort remained hospitalized.

Flags were key link to cop slaying, bombings

An American flag left at the scene of Officer Timothy Brenton’s slaying on Halloween and at a city maintenance yard where four police vehicles were torched on Oct. 22 gave investigators a key link between the two crimes even before a Tukwila man was identified as the suspect.

Detectives are now trying to determine why the man suspected of both crimes, Christopher John Monfort, 41, held a grudge against police that went from destructive to lethal in the span of nine days.