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According to a prepared statement issued to the Hugo News this week by the town’s mayor Richard Higginbotham, Hugo police detectives had developed Smith as a person of interest in the April 11 robbery of the Pizza Hut and had obtained a description of a vehicle being driven by Smith. On the day of the shooting, Hugo Police Chief Jon Paul Bozeman spotted the pickup and notified the two detectives, Jenkins and Allen, who responded immediately and followed Smith in an unmarked pickup truck, the statement read.
After following Smith’s vehicle to the Washington Community Center parking lot, Jenkins and Allen, who were in plain clothes, got out of their vehicle and began to walk toward Smith’s parked pickup “hoping to make a consensual contact with the driver,” when the children’ mother, Olivia Hill, who is listed as Smith’s sister, exited Smith’s pickup, according to Higginbotham’s statement.
Smith then allegedly put the vehicle into reverse and “accelerated rapidly backwards, striking one of the detectives,” Higginbotham’s statement read. “Both detectives then fired their guns in an effort to protect themselves.
“Prior to the shooting, neither of the detectives saw any children in the suspect vehicle,” Higginbotham said. “Neither of them had any information from the robbery investigation there might be any children in the suspect vehicle. After the suspect struck the front of the undercover police vehicle, it continued going backwards until it came to rest after running into some steel poles supporting an overhead awning between the buildings. Only after the detectives approached the car and looked inside did they discover the four children in the back seat.”
end snip
Thank you for the snip. I did notice this tid bit, from their prepared statement.
“hoping to make a consensual contact with the driver,”
Now anyone know why, as an officer, you try to make consensual contact? Let me offer this hint, it is not because you know you have the suspect in question, it is not because you have warrants for the rig, it is because you have no idea and you wish to initiate consensual contact so you can gain information you otherwise would not be able to collect.
Super interesting that was in their “prepared” statement.