Sheriff says he had warned officers about former Ohio man killed in Arkansas police shootout

Sheriff: Former Ohio man killed in Ark. shootout

LITTLE ROCK, Ark. — One of the two men who shot and killed a pair of police officers along an Arkansas interstate was identified Friday as an Ohio man who once prompted a sheriff to warn others that he might be dangerous to law enforcement officers.

Jerry Kane Jr., 45, of Springfield, Ohio, was one of the two shooters, said Clark County, Ohio, Sheriff Gene Kelley. He said Arkansas State Police had confirmed the identity with him Friday. State police did not return a telephone call from The Associated Press seeking confirmation.

Kelly said Kane complained in 2004 about being sentenced to six days of community service for driving with an expired license plate and no seat belt, saying the judge had tried to “enslave” him. Kelly said Kane added that he was a “free man” and asked for $100,000 per day in gold or silver.

Kelly issued a warning to police on July 21, 2004.

“After listening to this man for almost 30 minutes, I feel that he is expecting and prepared for confrontations with any law enforcement officer that may come in contact with him,” Kelly wrote in his warning.

Arkansas authorities said Kane and a person traveling with him in a white minivan opened fire Thursday on two West Memphis police officers who were working a drug detail along Interstate 40. It wasn’t known why the officers pulled over the minivan.

After killing Sgt. Brandon Paudert, 39, and Officer Bill Evans, 38, with Russian-made AK-47 assault rifles, the van’s occupants engaged in a gun battle with police 90 minutes later in the parking lot of a nearby Walmart, authorities said. Kane and the other person were killed.

Kelly told the AP that he wrote the warning about Kane because he was “very concerned about a potential confrontation and about his resentment of authority.”

He said Kane talked to him as sheriff because he is an elected official, not a hired law officer.

Arkansas State Police have revealed no information about the two men as they worked to reconstruct their whereabouts over recent weeks.

“We’ve got to find out: Why they were here? Where did they come from? Who had they talked to in the Memphis area?” state police spokesman Bill Sadler said Friday. “Did they set out to target the officers?”

“The only people who know what happened in the original traffic stop are dead,” Sadler said.

During that shootout, Crittenden County Sheriff Dick Busby was shot in the arm and his chief deputy, W.A. Wren, was shot in the abdomen, authorities said. Both were in serious condition Friday, a spokeswoman at the Regional Medical Center in Memphis said.

Associated Press Writer Lisa Cornwell reported from Springfield, Ohio.