COO-KILL SUSPECT NABBED
Fugitive in Maine woods for four days
A man accused of shooting dead a deputy sheriff in Maine was busted Saturday after a four-day hunt.
John Williams, 29, was taken into custody by officers who, in a symbolic gesture, used their dead colleague’s handcuffs on his wrists, the Bangor Daily News said.
“I think that was fitting,” said Sheriff Dale Lancaster.
Eugene Cole, 62, who was shot Wednesday, became the first lawenforcement officer killed in Maine in the line of duty in nearly 30 years.
Williams was found hiding in a wooded area at 4:30 p.m. in the town of Norridgewock, about 35 miles north of Augusta.
“We can now focus on the important task of respectfully laying our fallen brother to rest. Tonight, the citizens of Somerset County can sleep well knowing that a dangerous man has been taken off the streets,” said Lancaster.
The officer’s sister, Sherryl Cole Sirois, told the newspaper the arrest was like, “a sigh of relief ’’ to her.
“After I heard he’d been caught, I could breathe,’’ she said. “It’s just amazingly painful.
“God says to forgive, so I know I need to. At this point, I don’t know. He stole this man’s life. He stole my mom’s little boy, he stole my sister-in-law’s love of her life [and] stole his children’s daddy.’’
She said their mother, Gloria, had suffered a minor heart attack when she was told of the shooting.
“I saw the lights go out in my mom’s eyes when they told her. We’re not designed to lose our children.’’
The motive for the shooting was unknown, but Cole had once arrested Williams’ girlfriend, and Williams was worried about being arrested himself for failing to appear in a Massachusetts court on a firearms charge, according to the newspaper.
Cole had a reputation of being a kind officer, good at calming dangerous situations.
“Anytime he could defuse a situation without having to use excessive force, that’s the way he would do things,” local Fire Chief Troy Bowden said.
After the murder, a family member found a sheriff ’s badge Cole had given to one of Sherryl Cole Sirois’s grandsons.
Sherryl Cole Sirois said she remembers how excited her grandson was. “You would’ve thought it was a million dollars.”
Law-enforcement officers across Maine covered their badges with a strip of black, and the Cole family stuck a black piece of tape on the kid’s badge in Cole’s memory.
“I just hope he doesn’t become a cop,” Sirios said of the grandson.