By Paul Egan and Francis Donnelly
The Detroit News
DETROIT — Authorities on Sunday arrested a Detroit police sergeant accused of putting out a contract on his wife after earlier arresting the accused “hitman,” a 27-year-old Detroiter who could be responsible for as many as nine killings.
Sgt. David Cobb, 38, who works in the department’s eastern district, was arrested without incident at his home early Sunday morning, police said.
His wife, Rose Cobb, 47, was fatally shot in the head several times on Dec. 26, 2007, as she sat in the couple’s van in the parking lot of a CVS pharmacy on East Jefferson. David Cobb was shopping inside the store at the time.
The arrest of Cobb came hours after a multi-jurisdictional violent crime task force arrested Vincent Smothers, 27, in Macomb County’s Shelby Township. Police questioning of Smothers linked him to the Cobb killing and much more.
Smothers described himself as a professional hitman who was paid $1,500 by David Cobb to kill Rose Cobb and who also was responsible for a long string of killings, police said.
When arrested Saturday night, Smothers was wanted by Detroit police for first-degree murder on a warrant issued on April 11 by 36th District Court in Detroit.
That murder warrant related to a June 21, 2007, drug house shooting on the east side of Detroit, in which a man and woman were killed and another woman was critically injured.
Smothers and another man targeted the victims, seeking money and drugs, an FBI agent who was looking for Smothers said in a sworn affidavit filed Tuesday in U.S. District Court in Detroit.
Smothers and the other man entered the apartment on Gravier, tied up the two women occupants and ransacked the apartment, according to the affidavit and news reports of the incident.
Smothers then shot the two occupants, killing one of them, the affidavit said.
Smothers and the other man then went out to the parking lot, where they shot and killed a man who had been lured to the apartment, the affidavit said.
Killed were Clarence Cherry, 35, who police say was shot at least 15 times outside the apartment building, and Karisa Rice, 18, who was inside.
Lakari Kareem Berry, 27, also known as James Morgan III, who was arrested in 2007 at a motel in St. Clair Shores, is serving a life sentence for murder in connection with that incident.
Both Cobb and Smothers were in custody Sunday night and neither had been arraigned.
Smothers has served time in state prison for firearms offenses.
He was described by an uncle Sunday as a man who was profoundly and adversely affected by the 1999 handgun killing of his 15-year-old sister in the driveway of his family’s home on Vinton in Detroit.
The girl, a promising athlete who had been offered volleyball scholarships, was shooting hoops on Easter Sunday when she was shot by a man who came from next door to threaten another of her brothers, said Simon Smothers, an uncle of Vincent Smothers.
Family members say that “after that, he lost it,” Simon Smothers said.
“That boy must have felt the world was nothing but murder and if someone could murder his baby sister like that ... he may hate the world enough to murder people.”
Still, “there’s no excuse for murdering anybody,” Simon Smothers said.
Vincent Smothers, who attended Kettering High School in Detroit, is the son of Willie Frank Smothers, a former Chrysler employee and former construction worker who died of cancer in 1999, not long after his daughter’s killing, the uncle said.
Rose Cobb’s family, who had held a vigil for her in January, said they were stunned by the arrest of her husband.
“I mean, I’m just very shocked,” said a Hamtramck nephew who declined to give his name. “I don’t know what to say.”
Workers at Hutzel Women’s Hospital, where Rose Cobb worked as a social worker, said they also were stunned by the arrest.
They described Rose Cobb as a sweet, kind person full of grace and dignity. She was always willing to listen to other people and help with their troubles, they said.
“I just miss her very much,” said Renee Crosby, an administrative assistant in the hospital’s social work department.
After the arrest, which happened about 6:30 a.m., neighbors said they were surprised to see an armored vehicle and SWAT team descend upon their neighborhood on the city’s east side.
They said they were even more surprised to see the person being marched from his condominium on Edlie Circle — a police officer.
“They seemed fine to me,” neighbor Gwen Johnson said about the Cobbs’ marriage. “They’re just regular people.”
Copyright 2008 The Detroit News