June 17
ALABAMA:
3 police officers shot to death at Birmingham, Ala. house
3 police officers at a house to make an arrest were shot to death
Thursday, and the sheriff said a suspect was taken into custody.
Colleagues of the officers found their bodies outside the house where the
three had gone to serve "misdemeanor-type warrants," said Brett Oates,
spokesman for Birmingham's mayor.
Authorities did not release further details, but the small, one-story
dwelling, divided into apartments, had a reputation in the low-income
neighborhood as a site for drug dealing.
Jefferson County Sheriff Mike Hale said Nathaniel Lauell Woods, 27, and 4
others were in police custody.
Later, Police Chief Annetta Nunn, who had described Woods as a suspect and
released his mug shot, told reporters three people were in custody and
declined to say if Woods was among them. It was not known if any charges
had been filed.
"We just ask the public to pray for the officers, their families and the
officers who are still on duty," Nunn said at a brief news conference.
At least some shots appear to have been fired outside the house, in a
neighborhood of modest, older homes.
One of two police cars hauled away from the scene appeared to have a
window shot out, and there was glass on the street where the car had been
parked.
After the shootings dozens of officers - some wearing body armor and
carrying shotguns and rifles - swarmed around the house and went
door-to-door in the neighborhood before the arrests were announced.
Police searched an empty lot adjacent to the house for evidence. String
they laid out to reconstruct the trajectory of the bullets indicated that
at least one shot hit the Kingdom Hall of Jehovah's Witnesses building
across a narrow street from the rear of the home.
Herman Harris, who said he lives in the area, said the building where the
shootings occurred has a reputation as a "crack house."
"They're all the time out back doing drugs," Harris said.
The deaths marked the 3rd time in just over a year that 2 or more police
officers have been gunned down in Alabama.
2 police officers and a dispatcher were shot to death at the police
station in Fayette on June 7, 2003. On Jan. 2, 2 Athens policemen were
shot in an ambush after they were called to a home. A suspect has been
charged with murder in each case, and each has pleaded innocent by reason
of mental disease or defect.
(source: Associated Press)
