Memphis Cop Killer's Parents Speak Out
A 22-year-old Cleveland, Miss., man was charged Tuesday with first-degree murder in the Sunday shooting deaths of a Memphis police officer and another man from Mississippi.
Alexander Blaise Haydel, who police say used Army infantry tactics in a plan to kill more police officers, faces two counts of first-degree murder and was being held in Shelby County Jail.
The military tactics, according to police, included going up a flight of stairs to gain the "higher ground" on officers and attempting to use their concern for a downed comrade against them by blowing up two fire extinguishers near the downed officer.
At about 7 p.m. Sunday at the DoubleTree Hotel in Downtown Memphis, Memphis Police officer Timothy Warren, 39, and Arthur Warren, 49, also of Cleveland, were shot to death.
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| Arthur Warren - shot & killed |
A domestic dispute involving Haydel, who had recently married Arthur Warren's former wife, Bobbie, triggered the killings, according to a court affidavit filed Tuesday by Memphis homicide detectives.
In the court document, police investigators describe how they contend Haydel committed the crimes.
Investigators wrote that Haydel bit his wife on the lip, cutting the inside of her mouth, while with a group of family and friends on Beale Street.
Arthur Warren confronted Haydel, sparking a verbal altercation.
Once back at the hotel, Haydel went to two of three vehicles that the group had driven from Cleveland to Memphis for the Independence Day holiday weekend. He collected two handguns and went back in the hotel.
Confronting Arthur Warren on the ninth floor of the hotel, the two men fought and Haydel pulled one of the guns and fatally shot his wife's former husband, police said.
Several police officers responding to a "shots fired" call at the hotel had been told that a man had been shot on the eighth or ninth floor. Several officers using the stairwell exited on the eighth floor while officer Timothy Warren climbed toward the ninth.
Attempting to escape, Haydel encountered the officer in a north stairwell, shooting him in the head, according to initial reports, and killing him.
Haydel then took the officer's gun and two magazines filled with ammunition.
Haydel told investigators that he called on two military tactics learned while serving in the Army infantry.
He went up the stairwell to higher ground, giving him an advantage over officers climbing the stairs.
He also placed two fire extinguishers near officer Warren's body. He planned to shoot the fire extinguishers, hoping they would explode and "... kill everyone in the blast radius," investigators said in the court document.
It was not clear how that plan failed, with the affidavit saying simply that Haydel "was taken into custody" by officers.
Haydel was scheduled to be arraigned today in General Sessions Criminal Court.
State prosecutors had not yet determined whether they will seek the death penalty in Haydel's case, according to Vince Higgins, a spokesman for the Shelby County District Attorney's Office.
In one of the strange twists of the case, Arthur Warren initially planned to stay in Cleveland. He was reluctant to make the trip to Memphis because his former wife and her new husband were in the group, according to Warren's sister, Jerrye Thomas. But he went at the request one of two daughters he had with his former wife, she said.
His sister said she believes Arthur Warren and officer Timothy Warren, originally from Cleveland, were third cousins who may never have met.
Timothy Warren, a married father of an 8-year-old boy and a 4-year-old girl, arrived at the hotel driving his personal pickup while on the way to work as an Entertainment District unit officer based at the South Main Station. He joined the police force in July 2003.
He was the first MPD officer killed in the line of duty since officer Marlon Titus, 30, who died in a March 2004 car crash.
Before Sunday, the last on-duty officer fatally wounded by gunfire was Anthony Woods, 35. Responding to a domestic-violence call in August 2003, Woods was shot by a man who then committed suicide with Woods' gun.
Sunday's shootings took place at the hotel with 13,000 spectators gathered in AutoZone Park across Union Avenue for a Redbirds baseball game.
Funeral Services
Visitation for Timothy Warren will be at 4:30 p.m. Thursday for Memphis police; at 5:30 p.m. Thursday for the public. The funeral will be at 10 a.m. Friday at Hope Presbyterian Church, 8500 Walnut Grove. Memphis Funeral Home has charge. Burial will be in New Cleveland (Miss.) Cemetery.
Services were incomplete Tuesday for Arthur Warren, but Cleveland (Miss.) Funeral Home has charge.
© 2011 Memphis Commercial Appeal - Fox Memphis
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