Officer describes shooting that led to suspect’s arrest

By Matt Pordum (contact)

Friday, Oct. 8, 2004 | 9:45 a.m.

When police rushed to at an apartment complex in a gang-infested neighborhood, they didn't know that the man who was allegedly firing an assault weapon outside the complex would become a suspect in a killing the day before.

But a few hours before heading to the complex, they had seen a flier with a photograph of Samuel Pratt Moten. It said he was a terminally ill cancer patient who wanted to kill a police officer before dying.

At least one portion of the flier would later be proved false: Moten has never had cancer.

At Moten's trial Thursday, however, Metro Police Detective Mark Linebarger said Moten nearly fulfilled the other allegation on the flier. Linebarger testified that he shot the 27-year-old because "if I didn't fire I thought myself or my partner would be killed."

Linebarger also said that a rumor had circulated that Moten had begun "sitting in his backyard wearing a flak jacket carrying an AK-47, peeking over the fence when police officers drove by."

Linebarger said to his knowledge at that point Moten was not a suspect in the slaying of 27-year-old Marcel Travel Jackson. Jackson had been killed during a car chase on June 15, 2003, when the car he was in was sprayed with bullets from an assault weapon.

Moten is being tried on a charge of murder in connection with Jackson's death and is also charged with seven counts of attempted murder for allegedly firing an assault rifle at police on June 16, 2003, at an apartment complex in the 2000 block of West Lake Mead Boulevard near Martin Luther King Boulevard.

Linebarger said that before he arrived at the complex no "evidence pointed to Moten as the shooter." He also said there was "no specific information about Sammy (Moten) being at the apartment complex that night other than he hangs out there because his residence is right next to it."

Linebarger said when he arrived at the complex about 12:45 a.m., a woman who was outside the complex saw Linebarger and three other officers and yelled "Po-Po."

Linebarger said people usually yell "Po-Po" to warn others the police are coming, so that if they have weapons or drugs they can "get rid of them." He said the woman ran back into the complex and seconds later he heard gunfire that sounded as if it came from the complex.

Linebarger said he soon heard 15 more shots, but because of an echo he couldn't be certain where the shots were coming from. But then, he said, he saw that about roughly 85 to 100 yards in front of him a man wearing a white shirt was firing what initially looked like a handgun.

After he told the man in the distance to "drop the gun," Linebarger said, the man turned around and "jogged" into the courtyard of the apartment complex. Linebarger said he realized the shooter was Moten when he saw him at the top of a stairwell leading to the second floor of the apartment complex. He said he shot Moten in self-defense after Moten moved the gun toward him.

Linebarger said Moten then went into an apartment where he remained for about four hours as negotiators tried to persuade him to surrender and a police SWAT team was required to bring him under arrest. At the scene, authorities recovered an AK-47-type assault rifle, which forensics experts later determined was the weapon used in the slaying of Jackson.

Moten underwent surgery at University Medical Center for a gunshot wound in the torso.

Linebarger, who works in Metro's Gang Crime unit, said he knew Moten because while patrolling on April 21, 2003, he had seen Moten wearing a "camouflage flak jacket."

Special Pubic Defender Alzora Jackson is expected to begin presenting her defense of Moten today. She says Moten did shoot off a few rounds from the assault weapon but did so before police arrived. Jackson said Moten purchased the weapon from a man who fit the description a witness gave of the man who killed Jackson.