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Alert driver's tip led to capture of police killing suspect
KANSAS CITY, Mo. (AP) -- A man charged in the shooting death of a western Missouri police officer was arrested after an alert driver provided a tip that the fugitive was wandering within miles of where the killing took place, a law enforcement official said.
The driver reported seeing Ian McCarthy walking along a state highway near Bucksaw Marina, just east of Clinton, and he was arrested without incident late Tuesday, Sgt. Bill Lowe of the Missouri Highway Patrol said at a news conference later that night.
The arrest ended a two-day manhunt that began after 37-year-old Clinton police officer Gary Michael was shot to death during a traffic stop Sunday night in Clinton, about 75 miles southeast of Kansas City.
Michael and McCarthy had exchanged gunfire before the officer died and the driver fled. Lowe said McCarthy, 39, was suffering from a gunshot wound when a patrol trooper arrested him. Lowe declined to provide specifics about the gunshot wound.
McCarthy was taken to a Kansas City area hospital for treatment and then was taken into custody at the Henry County jail. He is scheduled to be arraigned on Friday on charges of first-degree murder and armed criminal action. Online court records as of Wednesday do not show whether McCarthy has an attorney.
"We're just extremely thankful to the citizens of Henry County and citizens of Clinton that continued to give us tips and information. Without that, we may still be looking for him," Lowe said.
Man convicted of notorious dragging death gets court review
HOUSTON (AP) -- A man on death row for the notorious slaying nearly 20 years ago of a black man chained to the back of a pickup truck and dragged along a bumpy rural East Texas road will get his claim of innocence and poor legal representation reviewed by an appeals court.
The 5th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals late Tuesday said it would review a claim from John William King that lawyers were deficient in presenting a case for innocence during his trial for what became one of the nation's most shocking hate crimes since the Civil Rights era.
King's appeal said that only a few pieces of circumstantial evidence that could be innocently explained tied him to the scene of a fight that resulted in 49-year-old James Byrd Jr. being chained at his ankles to the bumper of a truck in June 1998 and fatally dragged outside Jasper, about 125 miles northeast of Houston.
King, now 42, was the first of three white men convicted of capital murder for the hate slaying. Each was tried separately.
King's attorney, A. Richard Ellis, raised five claims to the 5th Circuit, four of them focusing on what he said was King receiving ineffective legal help at his 1999 trial in Jasper.