Associated Press
DETROIT — A 28-year-old convicted felon was charged Tuesday in the fatal shooting last month of a Detroit police officer and the wounding of another as they searched for him following a home invasion.
Wayne County Prosecutor Kym Worthy said JuJuan Parks could be arraigned as early as Tuesday on 16 charges, including first-degree premeditated murder, murder of a police officer, assault with intent to murder, and resisting and obstructing police. He also could face charges in other shootings.
“The investigations ... are far from over,” Worthy said. “I don’t want to taint any kind of jury pool.”
Parks was arrested Nov. 20 after a third officer shot him in the arm as he tried to flee from the home on the city’s west side. Police Chief James Craig has said he may be connected to several earlier shootings, including one that killed a 31-year-old man on Detroit’s east side.
It was not immediately clear Tuesday if Parks has an attorney who could comment on the allegations.
Officer Rasheen McClain was shot in the neck and later died at a hospital. His partner, Officer Phillippe Batoum-Bisse, was shot in the leg as he, McClain and two other officers descended basement stairs to look for Parks.
Craig said that Parks was looking for an estranged girlfriend at the home, which police believe he shot at about two weeks earlier. When officers arrived, people who had fled the home told them there was a man inside with a gun.
Craig has said that Parks baited the officers to come down the stairs and fired twice from an assault-type rifle before trying to flee. The two other officers retreated and took up tactical positions outside the house. Parks was wounded outside the house by one of those officers and dropped the rifle.
Worthy said the other two officers, Joseph Weaver and Danny Chambers, shot Parks and arrested him about a block away.
McClain was a 16-veteran of the Detroit Police Department. Batoum-Bisse has been with the department about 2½ years.
Craig said Parks was first arrested at age 14 for a home invasion and that he was paroled this year after serving about eight years in prison for a weapons conviction.
The Michigan Department of Corrections’ offender website said Parks was sentenced in 2011 to up to 10 years in prison for assault with intent to do great bodily harm less than murder. He was paroled this March and had been scheduled for discharge from parole in March 2020.
Meanwhile, Sgt. Ronald Kidd was suspended after the Nov. 20 shooting. Craig said that the 21-year police veteran could face misdemeanor neglect of duty charges because he sat in his patrol car a block away instead of joining other “officers who were trying to arrest” Parks.