By Louis Galvan, The Fresno Bee
A day after police shot and wounded a robbery suspect, Fresno Police Chief Jerry Dyer warned other robbery suspects that they are being watched.
“You may not see a police officer, but we are there,” Dyer said, announcing a newly created team of about 50 officers from five units to help identify, locate and arrest those individuals suspected of being responsible for a rash of commercial holdups during the past three weeks.
Dyer said police, using surveillance tactics, followed Leland Draper, 30, when he left a home in the 2600 block of North Weber Avenue about 10:30 p.m. Wednesday in a car driven by his girlfriend, Chanise Anderson, 24.
Dyer said officers were looking for Draper in connection with two armed robberies and also on a warrant charging him with parole violation.
The car was followed by plainclothes officers in an unmarked vehicle and was pulled over shortly before 11 p.m. at Stanislaus and E streets by uniformed officers in patrol cars.
When the car stopped, Dyer said, Draper pushed Anderson out of the vehicle and then jumped behind the steering wheel and attempted to drive away.
A patrol car immediately rammed the suspect’s vehicle and blocked its path, and other officers ordered Draper to give up and to put his hands into the air.
Surrounded by eight officers, Draper ignored the commands and reached for something, Dyer said. Believing he was reaching for a gun, two of the officers opened fire, one with a handgun and the other with a shotgun. Five shots were fired, he said: two rounds by one officer and three rounds by the other.
Dyer applauded the “restraint” shown by other officers at the shooting in not firing their weapons.
“We had eight officers there, but only two fired at the suspect,” he said.
Draper was shot in the neck and other parts of the body but refused to cooperate with the officers, Dyer said, forcing an officer to use a Taser gun to subdue him. Draper was wearing a bullet-proof vest and carrying a loaded .38-caliber handgun in his right front pants pocket and a police scanner in his hip pocket.
A dark ski mask and a holdup note were found in the car. The note read, “Put The Money In The Bag/No Die Pack or Detecter/or Murder.”
The bullet-proof vest was soaked with blood and had some damage to it, but it was not immediately determined whether the damage was recent, Dyer said.
Draper was admitted to University Medical Center where he was listed in critical but stable condition Thursday afternoon.
Anderson was questioned and released pending further investigation.
Draper, no stranger to local law enforcement, was wanted for parole violation and as a suspect in two armed robberies last month, one at the Fair Price Liquor store at 2717 N. Hughes Ave., and the other at an adult bookstore at 1535 Fresno St., both March 18.
On March 17, 1993, he was sought as a parole violator on a drug sale conviction when he was involved in a hit-and-run accident that killed 6-year-old Ebony Smoot and injured her twin sister, and their mother, Birdie E. Smoot.
According to court records, Draper was street-racing when he ran a stop sign at Martin Luther King Boulevard and Florence Avenue and struck a car driven by the girls’ mother.
Draper fled but was arrested a week later in southeast Fresno by a Fresno police SWAT team after barricading himself in an apartment for three hours. A .22-caliber semiautomatic handgun was found in the apartment.
On July 15, 1993, he was convicted of vehicular manslaughter with gross negligence and also felony hit and run, and two infractions -- running a stop sign and speeding. He was sentenced to eight years in state prison.
Birdie Smoot said Thursday that she wished Draper had learned from the accident.
The accident was a life-altering experience for Smoot, who worked for the Fresno County Probation Department in victims’ services and continues to speak about the dangers of drinking and driving.
“I think I had to reach deep within myself,” she said. “I knew that I was grieving, and I knew I had to turn it around and bring some kind of positive out of that. ... The tragedy of my daughter’s death helped me see I could help people. I knew somebody out there needed the same comfort others showed me.”
Subsequently, Draper was released on parole but got into trouble again on marijuana charges. He served five years in prison before he was placed on parole Sept. 6, 2002. He became a parolee at large Feb. 4.
Dyer said that shortly after Draper was identified as a suspect in the March robberies, officers started gathering information about where he could be hiding.
The information, he said, indicated that Draper might be running with another robbery suspect, Milton Thomas, 20, a recent California Youth Authority parolee, who was wanted for parole violation. Thomas was taken into custody Wednesday in connection with a robbery that night at
Princeton and Hughes avenues.
Wednesday night, the chief said, a team of officers was watching a residence at 2690 N. Weber Ave. where the two men were believed to be staying and saw Draper and Anderson drive away in Anderson’s car, going south on Freeway 99 until they turned toward the downtown area and the car was stopped.
Dyer said the special team of 50 officers assigned to work on the robbery cases are coming from the parole apprehension team, the street violence unit, district crime suppression teams, patrol and the area’s Multi-Agency Gang Enforcement Consortium.