The investigation of the murder of Colorado correction chief Tom Clements has taken another bizarre turn Thursday after a high speed chase turned deadly in Decatur, TX.
On Thursday night a Montague County, TX police officer attempted to pull over a black Cadillac being driven by former Colorado prison inmate Evan Ebel. Ebel responded by firing at the officer, hitting him twice in the chest with an additional bullet grazing his head. The wounded officer is in critical condition.
From there, the high speed chase was on. Ebel waved through highway traffic for 30 miles, eventually making it to Decatur, TX. City police again tried to pull him over, but all they received from him were bullets.
"I would say he was running about 100 mph, and he had his left arm out the window and he was just shooting," said police chief Rex Hoskins, who was parked nearby and also shot at.
At that point in time Ebel attempted to turn his Cadillac onto another road, but only managed to ram into an 18-wheeler. From there he hopped out of the vehicle and fired multiple rounds at police officers before they shot him down. He was taken to a nearby hospital but died soon after. No other officers were injured in the incident.
"It's unimaginably terrible," notes Ebel's ex-lawyer Scott Robinson. "He was a young man who had real promise as a human being."
Investigators are looking into Ebel as a primary suspect in the slaying of Tom Clements because of his previous time spent in the Colorado corrections system. The vehicle used in the high-speed chase, a black Cadillac, also matches the description of a vehicle witnesses noticed in the area around the time of Clements' murder.
Ebel had a litany of charges to his name. He plead guilty to felony robbery in 2004, felony assault and menacing in 2005 (separate cases), as well as being charged with assaulting a corrections officer in 2008.
Colorado corrections chief Tom Clements was slain Tuesday night when he opened the door to his Monument, CO home, near Denver. There have been several connections made to the case so far, but nothing has been definitively proven.
One such connection is the murder of a 27 year old Denver pizza delivery driver in a remote area outside of the city. The driver, Nathan Collin, disappeared from work and was found dead soon after.
Investigators have also looked into the possibility of Saudi national Homaidan al-Turki ordering a hit on Clements. Al-Turki was charged with sexually assaulting his housemaid in Aurora, CO seven years ago. Earlier this month, he had a request to serve out the remainder of his jail time in Saudi Arabia denied by Clements.
Deputies are now looking at a Craigslist ad put up by Clements days before his eventual murder. He was attempting to sell a high-end bike on the website, and had posted his number for people to contact. Investigators are currently searching through his phone records to see if they can find a lead.
