16 counts filed in freeway shootings
Suspect charged in 4 attacks; Arizona prosecutor says terror law doesn’t apply
PHOENIX — Prosecutors announced formal charges Wednesday against a 21-yearold suspect in some of the freeway shootings that have rattled the Phoenix area.
Leslie Allen Merritt Jr. was charged with 16 counts, including aggravated assault, unlawful discharge of a weapon, disorderly conduct, endangerment and carrying out a drive-by shooting.
But prosecutors did not file terrorism charges that police sought against the landscaper arrested Friday night at a suburban Phoenix Wal-Mart.
Maricopa County’s top prosecutor, Bill Montgomery, previously said Arizona’s terrorism laws enacted after Sept. 11, 2001, focus mostly on protecting public utilities from attack and would not apply to the freeway shootings.
Using ballistics tests, detectives tied Merritt to four of the 11 shootings reported on Phoenix-area freeways, Arizona Department of Public Safety Director Frank Milstead said.
State police said copycats might be shooting guns or other weapons on freeways, so the investigation remains open.
Only one person was injured in the shootings: On Aug. 29, a bullet pierced the windshield of an SUV on Interstate 10, and the broken glass cut a 13-year-old passenger.
Merritt is charged in that shooting and three others in which state police recovered bullet fragments from vehicles.
Merritt said at his initial appearance Saturday that officers arrested the wrong person. He said that during the time the shootings occurred, he didn’t have the pistol that police traced to a pawnshop last week.
“My gun’s been in the pawnshop the last two months,” Merritt told the judge. “I haven’t even had access to a weapon.”
But the owner of the Mo Money Pawn Shop in Phoenix said Wednesday that he had turned over logs and surveillance video that showed Merritt pawned the gun Aug. 30.
He had previously pawned and retrieved his gun twice since July, pawnshop owner Eric Baker said. Each time he retrieved the weapon, he would have had to present identification and give a fingerprint, plus undergo an FBI background check.
“And the final time it was brought here was Aug. 30 around 5:30 p.m., after the freeway shootings occurred that day,” Baker said.
Minutes after a state police SWAT team arrested Merritt, Republican Gov. Doug Ducey broadcast the news on social media: “We got him!”
Ducey was criticized for implying that Merritt was guilty of the shootings before he had even been booked into jail or appeared in court.
The message’s celebratory tone also didn’t convey that authorities have charged Merritt in only four of the 11 shootings, meaning there could be other suspects.
“When he says, ‘ We got him,’ you don’t ‘get’ somebody until they’re convicted or plead guilty,” said Mike Black, a Phoenix criminal-defense attorney for 30 years. “He’s assuming this young man is guilty.”
Police spent Friday watching Merritt’s home, then trailed him to the Wal-Mart, where a SWAT team moved in.
Five minutes later, at 6:52 p.m., Ducey took to Twitter: “BREAKING: We got him! DPS SWAT team is in custody of the individual suspected of I-10 shootings. Apprehended moments ago.”
Soon after, Ducey was accused of trying to win political points with an arrest that normally would be announced by the Public Safety Department.
Ducey spokesman Daniel Scarpinato said the governor thought it was important to inform the public of the arrest as soon as possible, and that there was no political haymaking involved. Milstead had been briefing Ducey on developments regarding the suspect.
“Here was an individual that had the entire community in panic, had injured someone, and the entire community was focused on looking for the individual,” Scarpinato said.
Democratic state Sen. Martin Quezada, whose Phoenix district straddles the parts of I-10 where many of the shootings were reported, said he was concerned the governor might be trying to gain political favor. But he said he understood Ducey wanting to quickly spread word of the arrest.
“I can totally understand where the governor would want to put something out there, ‘We got the guy,’” Quezada said. “But on the other hand, you kind of sit back and reflect … and you do realize the guy’s only been arrested, and everybody deserves their day in court.”