Police in Iowa have launched a large-scale manhunt for Scott Michael Greene, who allegedly ambushed and killed two Des Moines cops early this morning.
The incident began around 1 a.m., when an assailant shot and killed an Urbandale police officer who was sitting in his or her patrol car. While investigating the first attack, officers reportedly discovered the second slain cop about two miles away.
Update Greene surrendered to police Wednesday afternoon and is currently in police custody.
Schools in the Urbandale area, where the first officer was killed, were closed “indefinitely” Wednesday as law enforcement officers searched for the suspect, who has since been identified as 46-year-old Greene. The slain officers have not yet been publicly identified.
Police say Greene is 5'11 and 180 pounds, with brown hair and green eyes. He was reportedly driving a blue 2011 Ford F-150 pickup truck with Iowa license plate 780 YFR and a ladder rack.
“On the surface right now... it doesn’t look like there was any interaction between these officers and whoever the coward is that shot them while they sat in their cars,” a clearly emotional Des Moines Sgt. Paul Parizek said in a press conference Wednesday morning.
Police are currently working in pairs to prevent any further ambushes, Parizek said.
Greene, who has a lengthy record including charges of assault and a DUI, was also known to area police for bringing a confederate flag to an Urbandale football game earlier this month, apparently in protest of the Black Lives Matter protest. Police removed him from the stadium after he flew the flag during the national anthem.
“I was offended by the blacks sitting through our anthem. Thousands more whites fought and died for their freedom. However this is not about the Armed forces, they are cop haters,” a user with Greene’s name wrote in the comments section of a YouTube video showing Greene holding the flag.
A second video uploaded to the same channel shows Greene outside the stadium, claiming he had been assaulted by people inside the stadium and by the officers who removed him. He accused the police of stealing his confederate flag and demanded the officers bring him back inside the game to identify his assailants, who he said hit him and grabbed at his flag during the anthem. The officers declined, telling him it was unlikely the complaint would go anywhere.
“You came just to fly the flag and possibly cause a disruption tonight,” one of the officers said. “You have to understand in the current social climate we’re in, when you fly a Confederate flag standing in front of several African American people, that’s going to cause a disturbance, whether you intended to or not.”