By S.K. Bardwell, Houston Chronicle
The search for the suspects in a robbery that left a Houston police officer and a young mother dead Thursday escalated today, when two of the three were picked up.
The first man arrested, whose name is not yet released, was apprehended about 7:30 a.m. at a motel in the 10500 block of the Southwest Freeway.
A second suspect was arrested later in the day. No details on the second arrest are yet available.
One more suspect remains at large, and police said they were hope to make the last arrest before the day ends.
Homicide investigators have the name of the last two suspect and have a warrant for his arrest, homicide Lt. Nelson Zoch said.
Police, who have been looking for a white, four-door Pontiac Grand Am, were photographing and processing a white Chevrolet Lumina recovered when the first suspect was picked up. It is unknown whether the Chevy may have been the robbers’ getaway car Thursday.
Houston police officer Charles Roy Clark, 45, and Ace America Cash Express employee Alfredia Jones, 27, were shot to death at the Ace store where Jones worked in the 5700 block of the Southwest Freeway about 9:45 a.m. Thursday.
The arrests today were the culmination of work that went on through the day and night after the shootings about 9:30 a.m. Thursday.
After issuing a plea for help finding the suspects, who fled the shooting scene in a white, four-door Pontiac Grand Am, police checked out dozens of tips in every part of the city, although most centered in the southeast area where Clark and Jones were killed.
Deborah Graham, who lives just off Martin Luther King Boulevard, said she sent her teenage son to the store for milk in her 1997 Grand Am about 7 p.m. Thursday.
“He told me he got stopped twice on the way to the store, and then came out of the store to find police officers waiting for him,” Graham said. “Once he got home, we decided not to go out any more for the evening.
“I really hope they catch those guys,” Graham said. “Not just because it inconveniences me. Because what they did is horrible, and I want them off my streets.”
John Everett / Chronicle Tilmon Jones Jr., center, is comforted by a Houston Police officer and an unidentified woman outside the check-cashing business where his sister, Alfredia, was killed along with an HPD officer in a robbery in southeast Houston Thursday. Officer Clark was one day shy of his 20th anniversary with HPD when he was shot while running to the aid of a single mother being robbed at the southeast side check-cashing store Thursday.
Within minutes, Clark and Jones were dead. Jones barely had time to hit the panic button when at least three gunmen stormed the shop and robbed her.
Police said they do not know what was taken from the shop.
Jones, a single mother of two, almost never worked alone at the Ace store. But when a co-worker was hurt in a car accident this week, she had to open the shop by herself. The robbers apparently knew that Jones had no one with her.
At 9:44 a.m., Jones hit the alarm. At some point, she was shot in the head.
Clark, alone in his patrol car, arrived almost immediately with no backup. Within four minutes of the alarm, Clark also was shot in the head, fellow officers said. He managed to fire his weapon, but his wound was grave.
A wrecker driver who saw the officer on the ground grabbed Clark’s radio and summoned help. At 9:49 a.m., police heard the dreaded words: “Officer down.”
Within moments, police were swarming the parking lot, but it was too late. Clark and Jones were dead, their killers gone.
The scene was chaotic. “There were people screaming and yelling down there. I thought I saw somebody on the ground. I ran the other way, toward home, so I could call for help,” said Jeannie Evers, who was shopping at an Affordable Furniture store in the same center where the shooting occurred.
Police said Thursday night at least three men were involved in the robbery. HPD released a composite sketch of one suspect, based on the description by the wrecker driver, believed to be in his 30s and with a medium build. His accomplices appeared to be in their late 20s. Two of the men wore dark clothing. One was described as 6 feet, 2 inches tall. He was wearing a black or dark blue racing jacket with red stripes down the sleeves.
Things might have proceeded differently had Clark not been alone, some officers said.
“I would imagine if Charlie had another officer with him, this may not have ended in this type of tragedy,” said Hans Marticiuc, president of the Houston Police Officers Union.
Officers have the option of waiting for backup when they arrive on urgent Code 1 calls, such as a robbery in progress, but they almost never wait if they fear a citizen is in danger, Marticiuc said.
Donnie Trest, 47, a friend of Clark’s since childhood, said the officer was looking forward to retirement as his 20th anniversary approached.
“I talked to him about it,” Trest said. “I told him, you hear about pilots being on their last flight, they are fixing to retire and something happens to the plane. I talked to him about that.”
But Clark, who began with the department April 4, 1983, was unfazed by the dangers of his job, friends said. He’d been shot before. He was accidentally shot by another officer about 10 years ago when a bullet went through his windshield. But he stuck with the job, Trest said.
Trest said he learned of Clark’s death when the officer’s wife, Hilde, called him from a hospital where she was being comforted by other officers. He said the Clarks were married for more than 20 years and had no children.
“It’s unbelievable. What can you say?” he said.
Jones had just recently returned to work after taking time off to have her daughter, now 3 months old, family members said. She also had a 10-year-old son.
“I don’t know how I’m going to explain it to him,” said the slain woman’s father, Tilmon Jones. “I just don’t know what to say to that boy.”
Jones said his daughter had never been robbed before in the years she had worked for Ace.
“I never thought of it as dangerous,” he said. “She never was bothered by anybody.”
A preacher from a southeast Houston church who comforted Jones’ family after the tragedy said relatives told him it was unusual for Jones to be working alone, but she had opened the shop by herself the last three or four days since her co-worker had been injured.
The Rev. Hollis Taylor, a pastor at Trinity Fellowship Community Church, said Jones’ family suspects whoever killed her was watching the shop and knew Jones was by herself.
The robbers, Taylor said, “cased this thing out. This was planned. Usually there’s two people that work here.”
Taylor said he did not know the family before Thursday, but stood by to support them when he arrived at the shop shortly after the shootings occurred. He later gathered with them for prayers at their home.
“Family members are going to have to pull together to raise the baby,” he said.
At least 30 uniformed police officers gathered at the scene, along with homicide investigators, Houston Police Chief C.O. Bradford, Harris County District Attorney Chuck Rosenthal and HPD homicide Capt. Richard Holland.
Early in the evening, police thought they had a lead in the case. Courtney Allen Jacobs, 27, said he was eating a late lunch with friends in the 5200 block of Pederson when at least two patrol cars raced up his street.
“Before you know it, the whole street (was) flooded” with officers, a shaken Jacobs said. “They got guns to our heads -- telling us to get on the ground.”
Jacobs and his friends spent about three hours in custody after someone tipped investigators that Jacobs might have been involved in the double-slaying.
Clark was the first Houston police officer shot to death in uniform in almost two years. The last Houston officer fatally shot on the job was Alberto Vasquez, 32, who was gunned down May 22, 2001, while making a drug arrest with his partner, Enrique Duharte-Tur, who was also seriously wounded but survived.
A reward of up to $35,000 is being offered for information leading to the arrest and conviction of suspects in Thursday’s tragedy. Ace America’s Cash Express is offering $25,000, while Crime Stoppers is offering $5,000 and the Houston Police Officers Union an additional $5,000.
Anyone who sees a car matching the description of the wanted vehicle should call police dispatchers at 713-222-3131. Those with information about the case may also call homicide investigators at 713-308-3600 or Crime Stoppers at 713-222-TIPS.