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About Oregon daily emerald. (Eugene, Or.) 1920-2012 | View Entire Issue (Oct. 14, 1999)
News Digest Officers’ killer apparently enraged by marital trouble 1 PLEASANTON, Texas—Three law officers were lured to a trailer park by a bogus 911 call and shot to death by a gunman who wounded two others before killing himself, authorities said. Jeremiah Engleton, 21, kept fir ing from his hiding place in a thicket as up to 75 officers sur rounded the rural area Tuesday night. After a three-hour standoff, he shot himself in the head, inves tigators said. One of the slain officers had ar rested Engleton early that morn ing on charges of beating his wife, and a counselor with the sheriff’s department had persuaded her to take their 15-month-old daughter and leave him. “I don’t know if he felt the po lice had caused his wife to leave him,” Sheriff Tommy Williams said. That night, after he was re leased, investigators say Engleton called 911 and told the dispatch er: “Get somebody out here right away.” Then he ducked into the thicket of cacti and mesquite trees and waited for the patrol cars to arrive, they said. Sheriffs Deputies Mark Stephenson, 32, and Thomas Monse, 31, were shot to death as they approached the trailer. Nei ther had time to call for help. Af ter ambushing them, Engleton took each man’s gun and shot him in the head. State Trooper Terry Miller, 37, was sent to the scene when the deputies did not respond to radio calls. He pulled up 20 minutes later and was fatally shot through the windshield. “There’s no way to prepare for something like that,” the sheriff said. “If you had a half-dozen of ficers on the scene, you would have had six dead officers.” Dozens of officers descended on the scrubby patch of land to search for the gunman. Engleton shot at police with an assault rifle until officers using infrared equipment from a helicopter spot ted him in the thicket. A neighbor and a Pleasanton police officer were wounded in the shootout. Both were listed in good condition Wednesday. A shotgun and three handguns were found in the thicket along with the assault rifle, both deputies’ guns and a sack of am munition. Pa. governor signs execution warrant for Mumia Abu-Jamal 2 HARRISBURG, Pa. — Gov. Tom Ridge signed an execu tion warrant Wednesday for for mer radio journalist Mumia Abu Jamal, less than two weeks after the U.S. Supreme Court rejected his request for a new trial. Ridge ordered that Abu-Jamal be executed by lethal injection on Dec. 2. It was the second death warrant Ridge has signed for Abu-Jamal, the convicted cop killer whose case has become a worldwide cause for opponents of capital punishment. His supporters say he did not get a fair trial. The previous warrant was stayed. Abu-Jamal’s lawyers responded by announcing they would file an appeal Friday in federal court in Philadelphia. All of Abu-Jamal’s previous ap peals have been in state courts - the final rejection by the Pennsyl vania Supreme Court was ap pealed to the nation’s highest court. “Ridge is rushing to execute be fore all the evidence has been pre sented,” said Abu-Jamal attorney Leonard Weinglass. Abu-Jamal, 45, a former Black Panther and radio journalist, was convicted of murder in the 1981 shooting of Philadelphia police officer Daniel Faulkner. Police who arrived at the scene of the shooting said they found the dying officer and a wounded Abu-Jamal lying near his own gun. Several witnesses identified him as the shooter and two peo ple testified that Abu-Jamal con fessed at the hospital. Abu-Jamal has denied confess ing. Upbeat Gore pays return visit to Washington state 3 SEATTLE — A1 Gore, buoyed by union endorsements but bothered by a surge from competi tor Bill Bradley, brought his strug gling White House campaign to Washington state Wednesday. Gore planned to attend a labor rally and pick up $300,000 from fund-raising events while court ing Democratic Party activists who can help him gird for the state’s Feb. 29 primary and March 7 caucuses. The Democratic vice president, who shook up his campaign orga nization last week and vowed to “let ’er rip” in his contest with Bradley, began Wednesday on a high note in Los Angeles: He won the crucial, and unusually early, blessings of the AFL-CIO. Union President John Sweeney called Gore’s prize “a very valu able endorsement that really al lows for mobilizing 13 million members around the country who are looking to support a candidate who has a proven record of ad dressing working family issues.” Gore’s first stop in Seattle - the union hall of the International As sociation of Machinists and Aero space Workers, District 751- was designed to hammer home his strategy of mobilizing union ac tivists. The Boeing machinists union, with 55,000 members plus re tirees, endorsed Gore last week. The labor endorsements “give him a boost” both in the state and nationally, said Linda Lanham, political director for the machin ists. “It gives everyone an opportu nity to see what he does for work ers and their families,” she said in an interview. “He has a proven record. Dur ing the past eight years, Vice Pres ident Gore has always been there for us when we needed him, and it is crucial that he get elected president.” She said some in the labor movement are troubled by Bradley’s staunch position in fa vor of free-trade agreements, and convinced that Gore wants to pro tect American jobs and to make sure labor and environmental standards are considered when negotiating such pacts. State Democratic Chairman Paul Berendt, who has joined Gov. Gary Locke and most big name state Democrats in endors ing Gore, said the vice president is doing well here and will con tinue to lead Bradley by keeping Washington state on his radar screen. The Clinton-Gore ticket twice carried the Democratic-leaning but independent state. Gore has been a frequent visi tor, both on official business and to campaign for himself and other Democrats. He has been to the state 10 times since the last election, usu ally visiting heavily Democratic Seattle, where a concentration of high-tech millionaires has made fund-raising seem almost easy. His itinerary for this latest trip also included a $l,000-a-plate dinner at the Tony Benaroya Hall, home of the Seattle Symphony and a fund-raising swing-dance. Organizers expected the two events to bring in $300,000. “The Gore campaign is more organized [than Bradley’s], and he is solidifying the base of the De mocratic Party,” Berendt said. “He is the pretty firm frontrunner in Washington and throughout the West. We have not seen the kind of narrowing in the polls that you see in Iowa and New York and New Hampshire.” The party leader said Gore forces here were energized by a “bounce” from a reorganized and rejuvenated national Gore cam paign. 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