"I am coming to your house," he said. "I have killed four policemen and I need a place to rest and hide."
We know now who that was: Maurice Clemmons, the man who ambushed four Lakewood police officers Sunday morning, killing them all.
But to Chrisceda Clemmons, 45, the voice on the phone Sunday night belonged to her nephew Maurice. Her sister Dorothy Mae's son. The kid she used to baby-sit back home in Arkansas. The man who seemed determined to succeed, but who had also started to lose his mind last May.
"He trusted me," Chrisceda Clemmons said. "He trusted that I wouldn't turn him in."
But she did. And she was the only one. Other friends and family are accused of helping Clemmons escape the shooting scene, tending to his gunshot wound, washing his bloody clothes, and keeping him out of law enforcement's reach.
But Chrisceda Clemmons couldn't do that. She had to think of her family. And she knew her nephew was not well. There was the time last May at his house in Tacoma when "he got angry at something" and started throwing rocks at his neighbors' houses and cars. One hit an elderly man. Later Clemmons assaulted two sheriff's deputies.
