Authorities in Maine say they have arrested a man accused of killing an officer before stealing his cruiser and robbing a convenience store earlier this week.
John D. Williams was arrested Saturday after a days-long manhunt that involved 200 law enforcement officers from local, state and federal agencies. Photos taken by local media showed the heavily tattooed and scrawny 29-year-old shirtless, barefoot and wrapped from the waist down with what appears to be a yellow tarp as he was being led by detectives.
“MANHUNT IS OVER. PUBLIC IS SAFE,” Maine State Police tweeted Saturday afternoon.
Maine State Police said Williams shot and killed Cpl. Eugene Cole of the Somerset County Sheriff’s Office sometime after 1 a.m. Wednesday in the small town of Norridgewock. Williams then drove away in Cole’s marked cruiser and was later seen on surveillance camera walking inside a convenience store.
Cole’s cruiser was found abandoned a few hours later.
The sheriff’s office said Cole was a 13-year veteran of the agency.
“It is a very sad day, and it is with an extremely heavy heart to report the death of Corporal Eugene Cole … This was a senseless act against a committed public servant,” the sheriff’s office posted on Facebook Thursday.
The FBI, along with local and state agencies, offered a $20,000 for information leading to Williams’s arrest.
Officials did not immediately release further details about how they found Williams. The Morning Sentinel reported that Williams was arrested just after 1 p.m. Saturday in Fairfield, Maine, a few miles from Norridgewock. Detectives were seen taking Williams out of a wooded area behind a red, Cape Cod-style house, the paper reported.
Geoffrey Reynolds, who owns the home, said he’d seen police in the woods behind his house a couple of times in the past week.
“They said they got ’em,” Reynolds told the Morning Sentinel. “They were here yesterday and checked everything out and those old buildings that are out there, camps and stuff, and said there was nobody around.”
Shortly before Williams was arrested, Cole’s widow urged him to turn himself in.
“Mr. Williams, be assured you’ll be treated the same way Corporal Cole would have treated you if you have given him the opportunity — with dignity and respect,” according to the widow’s statement, ABC affiliate WCJB reported. “We just want you to talk to someone. Please, please talk to us.”
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