Mississippi teen accused of killing a uniformed officer arrested
A Mississippi teenager accused of shooting dead a uniformed officer in a police station parking lot smiled as he was escorted through a phalanx of television cameras and police officers at the scene of the crime.
Biloxi citizens applauded on Monday night as 19-year-old Darian Tawan Atkinson was brought into the station. Police said he was the man who walked around inside the station the night before and then killed patrolman Robert McKeithen in the parking lot, shooting him multiple times.
“We feel vindicated,” the police chief, John Miller, said. “He’s been treated properly and fairly. And now we will grieve for the family.”
It remains unclear whether McKeithen, 58, was targeted or shot at random.
“I can say that probably the saddest thing about this case is we have no motive, we have no reason for him to do this to anybody,” the Harrison county sheriff, Troy Peterson, said.
Miller said a Biloxi officer spotted the suspect while driving home through Wiggins, 40 miles north of the Gulf coast city. The officer called Wiggins police, who made the arrest.
Tall and lanky in a blue and black baseball jersey, Atkinson was yanked from the back of a police cruiser and smiled as he was paraded past the cameras and a line of officers, who stood respectfully as people cheered behind them.
Miller would not say if Atkinson had told police anything. He said Atkinson would be questioned and then transported to the Harrison county jail in Gulfport. It was unclear when Atkinson would go before a judge, or if he had a lawyer to defend him against a charge of capital murder.
“We want to make sure that we have a solid case,” Miller said. “We want the district attorney to be pleased with the case we present, and we want this guy to pay for what he’s done.”
It is unclear how Atkinson escaped a police perimeter and intense manhunt to reach Wiggins. Miller said he expected at least one person would be charged as an accessory for illegally aiding Atkinson.
Authorities say the gunman approached McKeithen and shot him multiple times on Sunday night after coming inside the station, where a surveillance camera showed him walking around. The suspect, at that point still unidentified, “seemed a bit nonchalant” in the video images, Miller said.
Miller turned the investigation over to the neighboring Gulfport police, saying it was better to have an outside agency investigate the death of one
of Biloxi’s own officers. The Gulfport police spokesman, Sgt James Griffin, said investigators determined Atkinson’s identity through tips and interviews.
Asked if Atkinson had a criminal record, Gulfport’s police chief, Leonard Papania, said: “There’s nothing that would indicate this.” Later, he described the shooting as “a sick and deliberate act”.
“With all of Robert’s training, I don’t know that there was anything else he could have done,” Miller said.
McKeithen was an air force veteran who spent 23 years with the Biloxi police and had been planning to retire this year. He leaves a wife, daughter, two stepsons and a stepdaughter. The family said through a Biloxi city spokesman, Vincent Creel, that they were not prepared to talk.
Mourners piled floral tributes on McKeithen’s patrol SUV, which remained in the parking lot where he died. A memorial service was planned for Tuesday night at Biloxi police headquarters. The officer’s funeral and burial were planned for 13 May.
“This was a senseless murder of a veteran police officer,” Mississippi’s governor, Phil Bryant, tweeted after visiting the Biloxi police station.
Miller said he and McKeithen had handled calls together earlier in their career. Department records show McKeithen and three other officers were awarded a medal of valor for risking their lives to rescue four children with special needs during Hurricane Katrina in 2005.
“He treated people with respect and dignity and we’re going to miss him sorely,” the chief said.