Des Moines, Iowa
“As the days move on, there are going to be some people who talk about this and try to explain it and figure out why and make a reason of why someone would do that. … I will not be one of them,” said an emotional Chief Dana Wingert, who added that he was amid the “stages of grief.”
“What happened (Wednesday) was the calculated murder of two law enforcement officers. Plain and simple, that’s the reality,” he said, speaking alongside officers, some of whom appeared to be fighting tears.
On Thursday afternoon, Scott Michael Greene was charged with two counts of first-degree murder in the ambush-style slayings of Urbandale Officer Justin Martin, 24, and Des Moines Sgt. Anthony “Tony” Beminio, 38. The officers were attacked as they sat in their squad cars, parked nearly 2 miles apart.
Greene fled before later surrendering, officials said. He was hospitalized for an unspecified medical condition.
On Thursday, officers from Des Moines and neighboring Urbandale said they were stunned and struggling to make sense of the violent deaths of two fellow lawmen.
“We can guess. I can guarantee, whatever it is, it’s not going to make any sense,” Des Moines police spokesman Sgt. Paul Parizek said when asked about a possible motive.
He called the slayings — the first deadly officer shooting in Des Moines since 1977 and the first ever in Urbandale — “the biggest case we’ve ever faced.”
New details in the investigation trickled out on Thursday.
Parizek said police found Greene’s car off the road in Dallas County, west of Des Moines, and uncovered a .223-caliber rifle hidden in the brush. Parizek said police were going through surveillance videos from businesses near the shooting sites — close to a major mall and to a high school — for a better understanding of how the attacks unfolded.
Greene was known to police in Urbandale, a small suburban city west of Des Moines. Over the years, he’d had a string of run-ins with police and a history of racially charged encounters with African-Americans.
In a YouTube video uploaded last month to an account in his name, a picture shows Greene waving a Confederate flag in front of black women at a high school football game. A separate video shows police trying to remove Greene from the game. A man using Greene’s name commented that he was “offended by the blacks sitting through our anthem.” The video’s title includes the words “police abuse, civil rights violation.”