The suspect arrested in the ambush shooting of a San Antonio police detective has said he was angry about a child-custody battle and “lashed out at somebody who didn’t deserve it.”
Otis Tyrone McKane was being led by police to the Bexar County Jail late Monday when he told reporters that he was angry with the court system for not letting him see his son and took it out on Detective Benjamin Marconi.
“I’ve been through several custody battles, and I was upset at the situation I was in, and I lashed out at someone who didn’t deserve it,” McKane said. He said he wanted to apologize to the family of the slain officer.
McKane, 31, of San Antonio, was arrested on a capital murder charge Monday afternoon in the fatal shooting of Marconi. The detective was shot as he sat in his squad car Sunday after making a traffic stop. Authorities have said a gunman walked up to Marconi’s driver’s-side window and fired.
It was one of several weekend attacks against law enforcement in multiple states.
The San Antonio detective and officers shot in Missouri and Florida were conducting routine tasks Sunday when they became the targets of violence. Marconi was writing a traffic ticket.
“I think the uniform was the target and the first person that happened along was the first person that (the suspect) targeted,” San Antonio Police Chief William McManus said.
In Missouri, a St. Louis police sergeant was shot twice in the face Sunday evening while he sat in traffic in a marked police vehicle. He was released from a hospital Monday.
Law enforcement officials say there’s been an alarming spike in ambush-style attacks. Sixty officers, including the San Antonio detective, were shot to death on the job this year, compared with 41 in all of 2015, according to the National Law Enforcement Officers Memorial Fund. Of the 60 killed, 20 were purposely targeted by their assailant compared with eight last year, the group said.
Police officers also were shot and injured during traffic stops in Sanibel, Florida, and Gladstone, Missouri, on Sunday night, but authorities have not suggested those were targeted attacks. All the shootings come less than five months after a black military veteran killed five white officers at a protest in Dallas — the deadliest day for American law enforcement since Sept. 11, 2001.
Race was a factor in the Dallas attack, but police have not said if race played a part in any of the attacks on Sunday. In San Antonio, the suspect is black and the officer was white. In St. Louis, the suspect was black, but police have not released the officer’s race. Most killings of police officers are carried out by white men, and most people shot and killed by police are white, said Craig W. Floyd, president of the National Law Enforcement Officers Memorial Fund.
Chief McManus said McKane was arrested on a capital murder warrant without incident after the car he was riding in was stopped Monday afternoon on an interstate.
McManus said earlier that he doesn’t believe the suspect has any relationship to the motorist who was pulled over initially.
Surveillance video shows the suspect at San Antonio police headquarters about four hours before the 50-year-old Marconi, a 20-year veteran of the force, was shot. The suspect asked a desk clerk a question but left before receiving an answer, said McManus, who declined to say what the man asked.
“I don’t know why he was in headquarters. We have some ideas,” he said.
St. Louis Police Chief Sam Dotson declined to name the 46-year-old officer who was shot and wounded there. He said the officer is a married father of three and has been with the department for about 20 years.
“This officer was driving down the road and was ambushed by an individual who pointed a gun at him from inside of his car and shot out the police officer’s window,” Dotson said.
The suspect, 19-year-old George P. Bush III, was wanted for questioning in recent violent crimes that included several robberies, a carjacking and perhaps a killing, Dotson said without elaborating.
“We believe he knew he was good for those crimes and that we were looking for him,” Dotson said. “That’s why he aggressively attacked a police officer.”
Police said Bush was later killed in a shootout with officers.
On July 7, Micah Johnson shot and killed five law enforcement officers who had been working to keep the peace at a protest in downtown Dallas over the fatal police shootings of black men in Minnesota and Louisiana. Ten days after that attack, a man wearing a ski mask and armed with two rifles and a pistol killed three officers near a gas station and convenience store in Baton Rouge, Louisiana. And earlier this month, two Des Moines, Iowa-area police officers were fatally shot in separate ambush-style attacks while sitting in their patrol cars.
“It’s always difficult, especially in this day and age, where police are being targeted across the country,” McManus said.
The Associated Press contributed to this article.
There is really only one race in America, The human race.
These killings of our police by mostly younger black men is beyond understanding and hurts at the heart level.
Born FREE in America is a great blessing for all of us. To have any group choose to be at odds with civilized behaviour
instead of using their freedom to grow and achieve success is just not right or good.
In listening to and watching our president these past 8 years, it is not a streach to believe he thinks the black population in America
should be marching and fighting back because their being opressed! I do not believe we could have the thousands of very successful
bkack people if they were truly oppressed. I think those choosing to be thugs are simply making the easer choise. Big Problem, Why?
No one is born a crook or racist or bad! you must learn those behaviours. Maybe we should be deporting the Farrakans and the Sharptons
of the black communities for all their Hate speech. that would remove an obvious bad influnce from the young folks making decisions while growing up in this great free nation of America.
Chip I agree, people choose or are led to what they are. When you have organizations that push for violence, along with public officials and main stream media outlets pushing division while ignoring facts, it becomes real clear where they stand on that side of the equation. This election wasn’t so much about Trump as it was that the American people are tired of the way things are being done in Washington DC.
As for this guys excuse about why he lashed out. Well why didn’t he lash out at the person he was actually upset with, the mother of his child? I hope they will check his social media and find out if he was influenced by any one of the numerous liberal left outlets, be it Black lives matter, the race baiter’s on main steam media or the liberal left. These individuals have been allowed to riot night after night with very little being done about it and I find myself asking why when in all reality it could be squashed with a curfew since they don’t know how to protest peacefully.
Buddy you dont blame the system to go and kill innocent police officers. The police officers did not cause any thing for you go out and kill them. Your laziness is the one causing all the problems then you go and blame your failures to other people. Most of these government parasites think that the working class owes them something and then when they dont get it they go out and start killing innocent people
I wonder if you belong to that group that Hell-lary is funding to go out and start riots and cause damage in order to start a civil war and then martial law. Sometimes I wonder why these people for a few dollars will go and commit a crime