From Seattlecrime.com today comes video of the traffic stop I have referred to in prior posts. Monfort, the accused murderer, was stopped while driving repeatedly through a neighborhood when he failed to signal. The officer approached the car, thinking he may be lost and intending to help the guy out. When he asked, “Do you know where you’re going today?” Monfort replied, “Do you?” The officer asked for his identification and registration and gave Monfort another chance, but was again met with a rude and hostile answer. At that point the officer cited Monfort for failing to signal and expired insurance and sent him on his way. Days later, Monfort would fire bomb the Seattle Police Maintenance Yard, and nine days later he would ambush Officers Brenton and Sweeny. To watch and hear the traffic stop, it can be found here: http://seattlecrime.com/2009/11/10/i-dont-think-i-want-to-give-you-my-phone-number
Monfort continues to be in serious condition with gunshot wounds to the cheek and stomach. Prosecutors have 72 hours from today’s hearing to charge Monfort, and the office is considering an aggravated first degree murder charge, which could net Monfort the death penalty. If ultimately found guilty and given a death sentence, it will no longer be necessary for Seattle Police Officers or the rest of us to wonder if Monfort knows where he is going.
There is an outstanding summary of the police news conference, which outlined a lot of information about Monfort’s movements and activities in the weeks before the attacks. As I and others speculated, on the night he was shot, police moved very methodically into Monfort’s cars and apartments. It was a good choice for many reasons, not least because he had bobby-trapped the apartment:
Police sent in a robot and then the bomb squad to deal with what they called ‘one-step above crude’ bomb-making. Another tidbit from the news conference was the sequence at the maintenance yard. Monfort planted multiple devices, then set off the device on the Mobile Command Unit as a decoy. Officers responded and approached the command unit, at which time the secondary devices detonated. It was a fortunate thing that officers were not quite near enough to be killed, but it was a very near-miss. SeattleCrime.com has the post Anatomy of a Murder here, and it has excellent reporting and writing as has come to be expected of Jonah Spangenthal-Lee :
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