Two hours later, the occupants of the vehicle that was stopped, Jerry Kane, 44, and his son Joseph, 16, were killed in a gunfight with police at a nearby Walmart.
Just how that traffic stop escalated may never be known. But investigators are chipping away with their probe, and preliminary reports released this week give some insight into the events of that day, one the survivors will never forget.
The following account was drawn from preliminary reports, crime scene and case summaries, cruiser camera and surveillance video footage and witness statements.
Officers down
Vincent K. Brown Sr., 37, of Houston, steered his semi onto the Airport Road exit ramp at the 275 mile marker of Interstate 40 around 11:45 a.m. May 20.
As he approached an unmarked car and police cruiser resting behind a white minivan, Brown’s biggest concern was how to maneuver his rig around them. He noticed two officers speaking with a heavyset man on the passenger side of the vehicle.
Brown hesitated as he saw the heavyset man, presumably the motorist who was pulled over, launch an attack on one of the officers.
“(He) pushed the officer into the ditch,” Brown wrote in a statement to police. As the second officer lunged forward to help, Brown saw another man emerge from the passenger side of the minivan.
“The skinny white male started shooting and walking toward him,” Brown said.
The officer on the ground, probably Evans, attempted to draw his gun and held up his other hand, warding off the assault.
Joseph Kane shot both officers with a “machine gun,” then retreated with Jerry Kane to the van, Brown reported.
Back in the passenger seat, Joseph Kane stuck his weapon out the window and opened fire again. A moment later, the van rolled slowly away.
Minutes later, at 11:50 a.m., the dispatch switchboard lit up with 911 calls.
When police arrived at the scene, they found Paudert dead. His body was lying face-up in the road with a gunshot wound to the head.
Evans was hanging on.
“When I arrived on the scene I saw Bill lying in the field. I exited my vehicle and ran toward him. When I got to him Officer Wilson held me back, not letting me approach any further,” said Patrolman Adam Simpson, West Memphis Police Department.
Evans later died.
Investigators recovered nearly 30 shell casings from the scene, as well as Evans’ bulletproof vest that was “shredded by gunfire.”
Two more wounded
Between 12:45 and 1 p.m., reports began to flow in that the white van had been spotted at a Walmart nearby and that one of the suspects was removing the license plates and trying to cover the windows with aluminum foil.
At 1:19 p.m., Sheriff Richard E. Busby and Chief W. A. Wren arrived at Walmart and caught sight of the van cruising slowly toward the exit. Busby pulled their blue cruiser in front of Kane’s vehicle and attempted to confront the suspects.
The moment Busby’s foot hit the ground, he was under fire.
Salina Bass was walking into Walmart to do some shopping when she saw Jerry Kane jump out of the driver’s side of the van and open fire at a blue police cruiser.
“(Sheriff Busby) got back in the car and got down because they were shooting,” according to notes taken during a police interview of Busby.
The sheriff was hit in the shoulder as he was ducking under the dashboard, and Wren was hit in the stomach. Busby later said he feared for his life and that of Wren’s.
“Busby states he left his duty weapon at the office by accident,” according to Arkansas State Police documents.
When the gunfire erupted, Bass took cover behind a parked car and noticed a green pickup truck soar by her and toward the white van.
Officer rams suspect’s vehicle
Officer Michael Neal, Arkansas Game and Fish, had been on a routine patrol in Marianna when he phoned Special Agent Phillip Hydron, Arkansas State Police, to “shoot the breeze.”
Hydron had bad news. He told Neal that a shooting had occurred, leaving two officers down.
Neal headed to West Memphis to assist, a journey that led him to Walmart. Neal was patrolling the lot when pandemonium erupted.
“I could hear multiple, fast, rapid gunfire. It sounded like a war zone,” Neal told investigators.
Shakinzie Burnett was sitting in her car in the Walmart parking lot, talking on her cell phone when she heard gunfire. Burnett told investigators that she jumped out of the car and dropped to the ground when she heard the noise.
“I just started to crawl as fast as I could on the concrete,” she wrote in her statement.
Officer Neal’s truck was behind the white van as it faced off with Busby and Wren’s cruiser and saw the officers on the ground. As the van backed up and attempted an escape, Neal took action.
“I made the split second decision to ram the vehicle to disable it from them getting out of the parking lot,” Neal told police.
As the white minivan backed away from the cruiser and off the right, Neal’s truck roared ahead, past Salina Bass as she hid behind a car, and slammed into the driver’s side of the van, stopping it cold.
“If it hadn’t been for that Game Warden, probably more of us would have been injured or even died,” Officer Scott McCall, West Memphis police, said in his statement to investigators. “I take my hat off to him.”
Before the dust over the collision settled, the gunfight was well under way. Shots rang out from both vehicles, sounds that triggered panic across the parking lot.
Inside the store, Melinda Bettis was putting the last of her items on the checkout counter when she thought she heard firecrackers.
It was only when Bettis saw a shoppers running inside the building from the parking lot that she said she realized it was gunfire.
“We ran down the back of Walmart until (the) shooting stopped,” she said in a statement to investigators. “I called 911 and screamed for help.”
Neal was hit by shrapnel and shattered glass as he and the Kanes exchanged gunfire.
“(Bullets) were hitting my headrest, my seatbelt, my window post ... my truck was exploding in front of me,” Neal said.
Unable to reload his weapon, Neal took cover behind the dashboard, threw the truck in reverse and opened the choke.
“It didn’t move for ... just a second, and then it finally kicked in ... I was hollering on the radio for help.”
Never so scared in his life
By then, a swarm of law enforcement officers converged on the scene, firing at the van and shouting commands at the suspects to drop their weapons, orders that were unheeded.
“I gave commands from them to show me their hands. They did not and I fired additional shots,” Hayes wrote in a statement to police.
Then the thunder of gunfire began to die down. Someone bellowed an order to hold fire. Movement inside the van ceased and officers began a steady, careful approach toward the vehicle, weapons drawn.
“I focused my attention on the passenger who was laid over on his left side. I noticed what had appeared to be an AK-47 in his lap,” said Deputy Darrell Prewitt, Crittenden County Sheriff’s Office.
Joseph Kane was wounded, but still moving.
“His right index finger was attempting to pull the trigger and he appeared that he was trying to raise back up,” Prewitt told investigators.
Prewitt fired, hitting Joseph Kane in the neck.
As police moved in, one officer pulled the AK-47 out of the van and tossed it on the ground. Neither Jerry or Joseph Kane was breathing. Both men were pronounced dead at 1:45 p.m.
Investigators would later recover 147 shell casings from the Walmart scene, both inside and outside the various vehicles there.
Inside Kane’s van, police found $301, a marijuana brick, a scale, and drug paraphernalia.
As the bodies were removed from the van, the crime scene secured and the injured transported to area hospitals, those who remained described the terror they felt as the bullets kept coming at them.
Patrolman Robert N. Williams told investigators that he felt like he was “a dead man.”
“He felt like the body armor would not have stopped what the suspects were shooting at them,” wrote Special Agent Gary Gray, Arkansas State police, after taking Williams’ statement. “He states that he had never been so scared in (his) life and all he could think of was his family.”
Contact this reporter at (937) 328-0360 or vlough@coxohio.com.
About the Author