By Scott Gutierrez Levi Pulkkinen, and Casey McNerthney
The Seattle Post-Intelligencer
SEATTLE — The bank robbery suspect police shot Tuesday after a frantic pursuit was armed with a pellet gun, which he refused to surrender, the Seattle Police Department said Wednesday.
Three Seattle police officers and a King County sheriff’s deputy fired two volleys at the suspect, Douglas M. Cox. 50, after officers had surrounded him on Spring Street, between First and Second avenues. Police say that he waved the weapon in the air and that officers had no way to tell what kind of weapon it was.
Police estimate that officers fired 15 shots, striking Cox three to five times in the head and neck. Other rounds hit the vehicle.
Cox was taken to Harborview Medical Center, where he was upgraded Wednesday to serious condition.
Only a few days earlier, Cox had bought the weapon - a steely black replica of a .45-caliber pistol - from a West Seattle sporting goods store, homicide Sgt. Gary Nelson said. Cox obtained it to rob a Wells Fargo bank in West Seattle with a man he’d befriended while in federal custody for previous bank robberies, Assistant Police Chief Nick Metz said during a news conference.
The weapon fires metal pellets propelled by compressed air. No criminal background check is needed to buy a pellet gun.
After being ordered repeatedly Tuesday to get out of his vehicle and drop the weapon, Cox waved it around with one hand while trying to restart his vehicle, which had stalled. Officers, concerned for the safety of themselves and onlookers, opened fire.
“They believed he intended to use it as a real firearm,” Metz said.
Cox, who most recently lived in Burien, reportedly told his accomplice, Kevin Palmer, 43, that there was “absolutely no way he was going to go back to prison” and that he would do “what was necessary to keep from being apprehended by police,” Metz said.
He also once told a relative that he was hoping someone would shoot him during a robbery in 1997.
A cousin, Richard Joyal, said Cox hated prison. Cox had been incarcerated eight of the past 10 years after two bank robbery sprees. Joyal said the shooting of his cousin brought back memories of conversations they’d had after Cox’s first bank robbery arrest, in 1998.
Cox, a former sergeant in the Army, had failed alcohol treatment and was at rock bottom, Joyal said.
“It wasn’t the money. He’d just had it,” Joyal said from his Ridgecrest, Calif., home. “He said, `When I robbed the bank, I was hoping someone would shoot me.’ I honestly believe that’s what was going on this time.”
If convicted of Tuesday’s bank robbery, Cox could be sentenced to life in prison as a “three strikes” offender.
Meanwhile, bail was set at $2 million for Palmer, the suspected accomplice. Palmer initially was driving the getaway vehicle, a Jeep Grand Cherokee, police say.
He was arrested and booked into the King County Jail after jumping from the vehicle as the police pursuit Tuesday wound through Yesler Terrace.
The four officers who fired at Cox were placed on paid administrative leave, which is standard in officer-involved shootings, Metz said
The officers are Sgt. Joseph Bauer, 45, a 14-year veteran; SWAT Officer Jeff Geoghagen, 37, a 14-year veteran; patrol Officer Chriseley Lang, 46, a 10-year veteran; and sheriff’s Deputy William Kennemer, 40, a Metro transit officer and 10-year veteran, Metz said.
Cox has been convicted of bank robberies in Spokane and in the Seattle area. In the Spokane robbery, he had armed himself with a BB gun.
He was released June 6 from a federal halfway facility after serving time for robbing banks in Fife and Kenmore. In those robberies, Cox did not display a weapon.
According to police, a silent alarm summoned officers about 10:20 a.m. Tuesday to the bank in the 2300 block of California Avenue Southwest.
Just after the heist, two patrol officers spotted the suspects pulled over in the Cherokee in the 2600 block of Harbor Avenue Southwest, where they had stopped to air out the vehicle after red security dye packs had exploded in stolen cash, Metz said.
The officers, with guns drawn, ordered them to stop. The suspects instead sped off.
Cox asked Palmer to be the getaway driver for $500 to $4,000, according to court documents.
The 30-minute pursuit ended when a truck blocked Cox’s route on Spring Street, allowing police to block him in.
After officers fired the first volley, they waited for about 21/2 minutes for signs of movement. Then, Cox sat up, still holding the weapon, as he slid toward the driver’s side window, prompting officers to fire a second time, Metz said.
Metz said officers adhered to department policies in both the pursuit and the shooting and used “a great deal of restraint.” Officers had no choice but to confront the suspect after he stopped downtown because he was considered a “violent, dangerous felon.”
Officers tried to clear out bystanders as they shouted commands to the suspect, he said.
An internal shooting review board will examine the officers’ use of lethal force, Sgt. Sean Whitcomb said.
Palmer, the second suspect, didn’t appear at his bail hearing Wednesday afternoon. His mother, 82-year-old Barbara Hopson, defended her son in a King County Jail courtroom.
“I just don’t believe that my child would rob a bank,” she said.
Copyright 2008 Seattle Post-Intelligencer