Democrats’ Gwatney slain
Posted on Thursday, August 14, 2008
URL: http://www.nwanews.com/adg/News/234191/
A man armed with a revolver shot and killed Arkansas Democratic Party Chairman Bill Gwatney at party headquarters in Little Rock late Wednesday morning, then led police on a 34-mile chase before confronting officers, who shot and killed him less than an hour later.
A member of the state Senate for a decade and the owner of three auto dealerships, Gwatney, 48, died at 3: 59 p. m. at the University of Arkansas for Medical Sciences Medical Center.
“We do not have any indication that the gunman knew Chairman Gwatney,” Little Rock police Lt. Terry Hastings said during a press briefing Wednesday afternoon.
Authorities identified the gunman as Timothy Dale Johnson, 50, of Searcy. Johnson was flown from where police shot him in the Grant County city of Sheridan to Baptist Health Medical Center in Little Rock, where he was pronounced dead.
While no motive was immediately known, Conway police late Wednesday released a report stating that earlier in the day a man identified as Johnson had written graffiti on the wall of a Target department store and was “extremely irate.”
A store manager told police that Johnson “was no longer employed there” and “was not allowed access to the property.” Officer Sharen Carter, a Conway police spokesman, said it was her understanding that Johnson was fired Wednesday morning. Reaction to Gwatney’s death came swiftly. Former President Clinton and New York Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton issued a joint statement about the chairman’s death. “We are deeply saddened by the news that Bill Gwatney has passed away,” Arkansas’ former first couple said. “His leadership and commitment to Arkansas and this country have always inspired us and those who had the opportunity to know him.” Gov. Mike Beebe, in a statement, noted his friendship with Gwatney. “Arkansas has lost a great son, and I have lost a great friend,” Beebe said. “There is deep pain in Arkansas tonight because of the sheer number of people who knew, respected and loved Bill Gwatney. Along with thousands of other Arkansans, Ginger and I are trying to come to terms [with ] such a shocking and senseless attack. We ask all Arkansans to keep the Gwatney family in your thoughts and prayers.”
A VIOLENT ACT Little Rock police said nine or 10 people were inside Democratic Party headquarters at 1300 W. Capitol Ave. and about a dozen were outside the headquarters when Johnson, wearing a white T-shirt and khaki pants, walked inside just after 11: 45 a. m.
He asked at the front counter to see the chairman, police and witnesses said, but Gwatney’s secretary told him Gwatney was busy. Johnson insisted, and Gwatney emerged from his office, police said. Gwatney’s secretary introduced them, and then Johnson pulled his gun.
While several witnesses said they heard three shots, authorities said they were still investigating and could not confirm that number.
Hastings said at least one shot hit Gwatney, and several witnesses said a shot hit Gwatney in the head.
Hastings said there had been no argument, no raised voices. The first 911 call was at 11: 49 a. m.
Sarah Lee, a clerk at Frances Flower Shop, directly across South Pulaski Street from the Democratic Party offices, said Gwatney’s secretary ran into the flower shop in a panic.
“She ran in and said ‘Please, please, someone please call 911.’ I thought maybe somebody had got hit by a car,” Lee said.
Annette Bradford arrived at the Democratic Party offices shortly after hearing of the shooting. Her daughter Angela Bradford works in the office, she said. Angela Bradford is listed as compliance coordinator on the party’s Web site.
“She was coming from the Capitol, and before she got into the office, [party field representative ] Donell Meadows was running out and told her to run,” Annette Bradford said. “They ran back toward the Capitol.”
A few minutes later, Johnson walked into the offices of the Arkansas State Baptist Convention, seven blocks east of the Democratic Party headquarters, with a gun in his left hand, said Dan Jordan, the Baptist Convention’s business manager.
“He went upstairs on our second floor, and when the building manager confronted him, he said something about losing his job, cocked the gun and pointed it at him, then ran out the front door,” Jordan said. Jordan said he saw Johnson get into a blue pickup, which turned out to be a 2000 Dodge Dakota, and drive off. Jordan pointed out the truck to officers responding to Gwatney’s shooting. “I was wondering how the police got there so quickly,” Jordan said. “Now I know this had already been called in.”
THE CHASE Little Rock police followed the Dakota from East Seventh and Arch streets at 30-35 mph, police said, and almost forced it to a stop several times. One officer got close enough to point a shotgun at the truck but did not fire, police said.
The pickup headed west on East Seventh to Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. Drive, where it got onto Interstate 630 heading east. Officers followed the truck from I-630 to Interstate 30, then chased it south on Interstate 530 to Exit 10, where it turned south on U. S. 167 toward Sheridan.
Arkansas State Police troopers took the lead in the pursuit, joined by at least one Little Rock police officer and Grant County sheriff ’s deputies once Johnson crossed the Pulaski County line.
Sheridan police officers set up a roadblock inside the city limits, just north of Little Creek Cut-Off. To avoid the roadblock, Johnson drove off the highway, through a ditch and toward the Winston Clinic, at Little Creek Cut-Off and Arkansas 46.
Mike Dunning was at his home on U. S. 167 when he heard a local radio broadcast telling motorists to be ready to pull over because police were pursuing a suspect in a Little Rock shooting south toward the Grant County seat.
Dunning said he walked outside, camera in hand, when he saw the pickup head toward the Sheridan police roadblock.
As the pickup sped toward the clinic, Dunning said, it appeared to head directly toward one of two officers. Both officers fired what appeared to be shotguns at the pickup, which at the last moment turned away from the officer and the clinic, he said.
“They were shooting out of their own safety and the safety of the public,” Dunning said. The one officer facing the truck “put his own life on the line. You’ve got to give them credit. They were heroes.”
Finally, at Little Creek Cut-Off and U. S. 167, police stopped the pickup, and a sheriff’s office car pulled up tight against the driver’s-side door.
State Police spokesman Bill Sadler said a trooper pulled up tight to the passenger side to keep Johnson in the vehicle, but he got out anyway.
He fired two rounds at the deputy’s vehicle, Grant County Sheriff Lance Huey said. Three troopers and a Little Rock officer returned fire at 12: 29 p. m., authorities said. The brief exchange attracted dozens of residents from nearby homes in the normally quiet neighborhood. The three troopers involved in the shooting were placed on administrative leave with pay, pending the outcome of an investigation into the shooting — normal procedure for officerinvolving shootings, said state police Maj. Cleve Barfield, commander of the agency’s criminal investigation division.
WITNESSES COUNSELED As Little Rock police interviewed witnesses to Gwatney’s shooting, Matt DeCample, a spokesman for Beebe, said state drug director Fran Flener, who had accompanied Beebe on a plane trip to Springdale before returning to Little Rock after the shooting, suggested getting counselors from UAMS to counsel people who were inside the party headquarters when Gwatney was shot. The counseling was provided in the governor’s conference room, at the suggestion of Beebe staff member Grant Tennille. “We were standing down there in the parking lot [at the party headquarters ], and they weren’t going to be able to get back into their office, and I thought, ‘Well I know where there is a room with air conditioning, ’” Tennille said. DeCample said about 20 people were in the governor’s conference room, including party staff members, volunteers and others. Leslie Taylor, a spokesman at UAMS, said the psychiatry department sent a crisis response team of eight people, including psychologists, psychiatrists and counselors to the state Capitol to provide counseling to any of Gwatney’s colleagues who needed assistance dealing with the trauma. They will provide counseling for as long as needed, she said. A crisis team is a team of people trained as first responders to a traumatic situation or crisis, she said.
CONDOLENCES POUR IN Gwatney, who was a superdelegate to the coming Democratic National Convention, was a widely noted political figure. The Democratic National Committee released a statement under the names of Chairman Howard Dean, Vice Chairman and former Little Rock Mayor Lottie Shackelford, and Mark Brewer, president of the Association of State Democratic Chairs. “On behalf of the Democratic Party our thoughts and prayers are with Chairman Gwatney’s family and friends and the extended Democratic family in Arkansas,” they said in the statement. “With this senseless act of violence we have lost a good friend and honorable man.”
Arkansas’ former Republican Gov. Mike Huckabee called Gwatney’s death a “senseless act of depraved violence.”
Gwatney “was a very effective leader for his party and an event like this certainly makes all politics seem small and insignificant,” Huckabee said in a statement.
Before Wednesday’s premiere of Face the Music and Dance, the biennial Gridiron show in which the Pulaski County Bar Association spoofs Arkansas politics, Pulaski County Circuit Judge Mary McGowan called for a moment of silence and dedicated the run of the show, which continues through Saturday at the Arkansas Repertory Theatre, to Gwatney’s memory.
The governor canceled his appearance.
WORD SPREADS In the hour after the shooting, UAMS patients and their families leaned over the railing of the parking deck, gawking at the many police officers stationed outside the emergency entrance and across the hospital grounds. Below, cars belonging to family members and lawmakers continued to race in. A frantic young woman in denim shorts and a yellow shirt leapt from a white car that had sped into the drive and hurried to the emergency room’s entrance, where she was hugged and ushered inside by a somber group of friends and legislators. State Sens. Shane Broadway, John Paul Capps, Percy Malone, Steven Bryles and Bobby Glover gathered outside, pacing and comforting one another as more police cruisers arrived. Meanwhile, inside, Beebe met with family members. A helicopter believed to be carrying Johnson landed at Baptist Health Medical Center about 15 minutes before 2 p. m. A crowd of emergency responders and hospital officials quickly rolled the body on a gurney from the helicopter pad down to the emergency room’s front door, moving empty wheelchairs out of the way. Blood surrounded the shirtless patient’s head, where only a few tufts of blondish-brown hair were visible from the tangle of medical equipment attached to him, and a few splotches of red smeared his chest. A hospital spokesman later emerged and said he could not confirm that Johnson was there. Information for this article was contributed by Cathy Frye, Kristin Netterstrom, Noel E. Oman, Michael R. Wickline and L. Lamor Williams of the Arkansas Democrat-Gazette.